The number of foreign tourists in Israel rose sharply again last year. A development that has continued at the beginning of 2023 - January visitor numbers, for example, already reached 90 percent of pre-Corona levels again.
Last year, nearly 2.7 million foreign visitors traveled to the Holy Land. This compares to just 397,000 in 2021 and 831,000 in 2020. Israel’s tourism in 2022 thus returned to 60 percent of the travel volume of the pre-Corona year 2019.
In the 2022 annual statistics, France ranked the first among source markets among EU countries with 231,500 tourist arrivals, the United Kingdom ranked second with 174,600 travelers. Germany continues to rank third - 149,100 Germans visited Israel in 2022. Tourism Minister Haim Katz expressed confidence in breaking the 2019 tourism record in the near future.
The January figures show that the upward trend will continue in 2023. For example, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism counted 257,400 tourist arrivals in the first month of this year, compared with 284,800 visitors in January 2019. This represents a shortfall of just 9.6%. However, it remains to be seen whether the recently renewed conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, with several deaths, will have a dampening effect on the demand.