Selling Israel: How to Address Questions About Safety
by Dori SaltzmanDespite the fact that Israel rarely makes it into the 11 o’clock news anymore, when selling Israel vacations, travel sellers invariably are confronted by the safety concerns of their clients.
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“Safety is the biggest concern for most Americans traveling to Israel,” said Eliezer Hod, consul and director, U.S. Western region, for Israel’s Ministry of Tourism. “Unfortunately, most of the images Americans get from Israel are scenes of violence and conflict in areas like the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank that are shown on the news.”
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Safety concerns are “always a big challenge for us,” said Uri Steinberg, consul and director for the U.S. Midwest region for the tourism ministry. “That’s definitely the number one question that agents ask of us – ‘How should I confront these questions?’”
Travel Market Report spoke with the regional directors for Israel’s tourism ministry to hear their recommendations for how to address client questions about safety when traveling in Israel.
Cite the numbers: 2010 was a record year for tourism to Israel, globally and in visitor counts from the U.S.
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“The way that I always answer that question is that the numbers speak for themselves,” said Joe Diaz, the ministry’s director for the Southern region in the U.S. “In terms of people that visited Israel just in the last three years, we’re talking about close to 10 million people, and every one of them has come home safe.”
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“Three and a half million tourists visited Israel last year, and they all came back to their country safe and sound. That is the first thing a travel agent should say to their customers,” said Sharon Katzav, the ministry’s deputy director for the Northeastern U.S.
Of those three and a half million people, 630,000 came from the U.S.
Point out travel supplier involvement: “You’ve also got many airlines now flying to Israel that never flew there before – Delta, US Airways, Continental. As far as we’re concerned that is definitely a sign that this is a destination that companies are willing to gamble on financially,” Steinberg said.
“The cruise lines have also returned to calling on the ports in Israel,” Diaz added. “It shows a lot of investment into a destination that if it wasn’t safe, they would not put their clients in jeopardy.”
Tout the low crime rate: Agents should tell their clients that Madonna visited Israel in 2009, Katzav told Travel Market Report. She admitted that although she’d been nervous beforehand, afterwards she realized it was just as safe as anywhere in the U.S.
“People can walk anywhere 24/7 by themselves,” Katzav continued, comparing Tel Aviv to New York City. “When I walk in New York at 10 p.m. the streets are empty, but in Tel Aviv at that hour of the day, it’s so full of people.”
“The crime rate in Israel is extremely low,” added Steinberg. “When people are in Israel they’re always shocked at how safe they feel, because people are not getting mugged, people are not getting robbed.”
In his meetings with agents Steinberg said he compares the crime rates in U.S. cities (avoiding the most crime-ridden cities) to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the differences are noticeable. For example, in 2007 the average annual number of homicides in Los Angeles was 1,626. In New York City it was 1,159. In 2008, all of Israel (minus the West Bank and Gaza) recorded 171 homicides.
“Talk to anyone that’s been to Israel,” Diaz said. “The first thing they’re going to tell you is how safe they felt. It’s safer to walk in Israel on the streets on a 24/7 basis compared to any urban city in the U.S.”
Get to know the geography: It’s unfortunate that so much of the fear Americans have about traveling to Israel is caused by images of what goes on in Gaza, a region that’s not visited by tourists, Diaz said.
“Your clients will not get close to any possible hot spots,” Steinberg said. “I will not say that Gaza is the safest place, but there’s nothing to see around there, so itineraries would not go there.”
Other countries experience a similar issue: in Mexico people canceled vacation in Cancun or the Mexican Riviera after seeing press coverage of drug-related violence in Tijuana.
“It’s unfortunate that Americans, overall, don’t really have a concept of countries versus regions,” Diaz said.
Ultimately, Steinberg said, “We would never urge people to come to Israel if we didn’t think it was safe.”
