Foreign tourism in Israel still in trouble

The Israel Hotel Association has warned Tuesday about the status of tourism in Israel, citing data on hotel stays by foreign visitors to Israel for the first half.

The numbers of nights spent in the country’s hotels by foreign visitors for the first half of the year were similar to the first half of 2015, the association said, but those numbers reflected a 24% decline from the first half of 2014, according to Haaretz.

The number of hotel nights spent by foreign tourists doesn’t necessarily track the number of foreign visitors in Israel, it should be noted, particularly as a result of the increasing popularity of internet-based businesses such as Airbnb, which pair visitors looking for short-term apartment or home rentals and foreign tourists.

Overall, however, foreign tourist arrivals did in fact decline markedly in the second half of 2014, following the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, the daily added.

The Israeli war turned genocidal when its troopers resorted to the mass killings of the Gaza civilians in a bid to crush the resolve of the Gaza combatants through to no avail.