Air Canada's Duncan Bureau with Ellen Melman of the Israel Ministry of Tourism's Toronto office
Idit Papular & Debbi Aharon of Aufgang Travel with YYZ Travel's Alexandra Peltz
Brett Walker from Collette with Ricky Goldman of Goldman Marketing Strategy
Israelis, it would seem, know how to throw a party. As a group of us – travel agents, tour operators and fans of the country – found out at the classy Sopra Lounge last week.
And there was much to celebrate: 2013 was the country’s best ever year for tourism (almost 4 million visitors – not bad for a country less than 1/2 the size of Nova Scotia). And this year is set to be a record breaker as well, with Canadian visits alone up 16% year over year.
As part of the evening we got a sneak preview of an episode of a program about Tel Aviv which will be airing on the Discovery Channel July 22nd. While touring the city, the presenter discovers it was only founded in 1909 (!); the food can be Polish, or Iraqi – or Brooklynese; it has 75 km of bike paths and the very active nightlife focuses on the beach come Friday night.
Jerry Adler, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism’s public relations director, explained that the gathering was a way to say ‘thank you’ to all of the supporters of Israel. “When Canadians commit to travel, they travel – they are a lot more immune to concerns re safety and security than Americans.”
“Canada is a wonderful market for us,” Haim Gutin, the country’s Consul & Israel Tourism Commissioner, whose term in Canada has now been completed, told us. “Tourism is soaring and for that I have to thank you. I’ll be back – but in the interim, I’ll see you in Jerusalem!”
