Israel expects a record-breaking 4 million tourists to have visited the country by the end of 2018, Trend reports referring to The Jerusalem Post.
"I am excited to welcome next week Israel’s 4 millionth tourist in 2018. This represents the unprecedented success of the Tourism Ministry, which invests in marketing Israel around the world," Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin said. “This includes the latest agreement signed with the Philippine Minister of Labor to increase the quota of up to one thousand foreign workers in the hotel sector."
There were approximately 13% more tourist entries in 2018 than 2017. Comparatively, the increase in global tourism has only grown by 4%.
In terms of demographics, most of the tourists who visited Israel were Christians, with 61% of the tourists in 2018. Some 22% were Jews, 12.1% not affiliated, 1.8 % Muslim, 0.6% were Buddhists, 0.5% were Hindus, 0.1% were Bahais and 1.7% others.
There has been a significant increase of tourists from the United States (813,500), France (320,000), Russia (303,200), Germany 259,500, Britain (~200,000) and from China (about 100,000).
The Ministry of Tourism also invested significant funds to expand hotels throughout Israel. Some NIS 145 million in grants were given to entrepreneurs to build 3,829 new rooms from the North to South.
Israel contributed the rise in tourism to these hotel grants, the opening if new direct routes from [potential tourist countries and advertising campaigns in USA, Germany, Russia, Italy, England, China, Ukraine, Brazil and Philippines.
Direct revenues from tourism were NIS 24 billion.