Israel Launches Bid to Attract Evangelical Christian Tourists

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Israel is mounting a huge effort to attract American evangelical Christian travelers to the Holy Land, hoping to improve its terrorism-rocked tourism sector by appealing to the same voters who helped re-elect President Bush.


Israel tourism officials are renting exhibit space at major upcoming evangelical Christian events including January 2005’s Creative Church Conference in Dallas, the Religious Conference Management Association’s exposition in St. Louis that same month, and February’s National Religious Broadcasters conference in Anaheim, Calif. According to a floor plan of the NRB event, Israel is by far the largest exhibitor, renting more floor space than the fundamentalist USA Radio Network and the Salvation Army combined.


“This is a very important market for us,” said Haim Gutin-Golan, Israel’s North American consul for tourism.


Israeli tourism officials hired Jack Hayford, a well-known Christian TV personality and author, to narrate a 45-minute video instructing pastors how to put together a tour group to Israel.


Although Israel is the homeland for Jewish people, it also contains sites that are among the holiest on earth for both Muslims and Christians, including Bethlehem’s Church of the Holy Nativity, Nazareth, and the Mount of Olives.


In Israel’s peak tourism years from 1995 through 2000, the country saw between 2.5 and 2.7 million visits annually, with 70% of those visitors Christian, Mr. Gutin-Golan said. Because of fears of terrorism starting in late 2000, those numbers plunged across the board, but no segment suffered as badly as the Christian market. From 2000 through 2003, 99%of traffic to Israel was Jewish and total visits sank below the 1-million-a-year mark.


The 2001 terror attacks were the first terrorist attacks to significantly drain Christian travel from Israel, said Eddie Reece, owner of Holy Land Sun tours, who has led more than 75 Christian tours to Israel since 1987. “Before 9/11, whenever there was a hijacking or something it was the Jewish market that would go down and the Christian market would hold steady,” Mr. Reece said. “But with 9/11 it was the Christian market that went down.”


To reignite that market Israel is going right to evangelicals. “There are thousands of churches, thousands of leaders, thousands of Christian organizations that remain untapped,” Mr. Gutin-Golan said.


He added that he hopes Israel can open a third tourism office in America by the end of 2005 to complement the work done at the Los Angeles and New York offices. “We need an office in the Bible Belt,” the consul said. “Houston, or Dallas, or Atlanta.”


The lessening of violence in Israel has already shown benefits in this market. For the first nine months of 2004, total visits were 1.2 million, including 211,000 from America. Mr. Gutin-Golan says this projects to 1.5 million total for 2004 and that surveys completed by arriving visitors show that from 10% to 15% of those will be Christians.


Mr. Reece, who said he and other tour operators have noticed the up-tick, added that he is not sure why evangelical Christians are more receptive to traveling to Israel than others. “Maybe they’re becoming more aware of their connection to Israel,” he said. “Maybe they’re reading their Bibles more.”


This November, Israel hosted a press trip for a group of Hispanic Christian evangelical journalists. Israel believes evangelicals will be interested in making group pilgrimages to see sites like the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (one of two sites held to be the burial site of Jesus), the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Beatitudes, site of the Sermon on the Mount, Nazareth’s Church of the Annunciation, and Cana, the site of Jesus’s first miracle.


“People will go to places that are quiet and safe,” Mr. Gutin-Golan said. “And we are now very safe.”


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