The Vista Club at the Tel Aviv Hilton sits 17 stories above the Mediterranean shoreline. As Hilton’s Israel chief, Ronnie Fortis, spoke to reporters over breakfast a couple of weeks ago, storm clouds began to obscure the panoramic view.
Arguably Israel’s top hotelier, Fortis is attuned to tremors rippling through Israel’s hospitality industry as Palestinian stabbing attacks generate bloody headlines and spook tourists.
“I’d be stupid to tell you there’s no effects,” he said. “But we don’t really feel it.”
When it comes to the international community, Israel’s messaging strategy seems paradoxical. Yes, the country faces constant, violent threats from an ideological enemy. But is it safe to visit? Tourist officials repeatedly say, “Absolutely.”
The strategy appears to be working. At key tourist sites like Masada and Caesarea, tour buses are parked a half-dozen deep.
In an Oct. 11 press release, the Israeli Tourism Ministry noted that Israel’s total of 225,000 tourists in September is 25 percent higher than last year’s figure, and 6 percent higher than the year before.
And during October, the ministry announced a Groupon deal for a trip to Israel, including accommodations and plane tickets, starting at $990, the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.
“When you shout ‘Crisis, crisis’ it only intensifies the external crisis and makes people hesitate to come to Israel,” said Yariv Levin, Israel’s tourism minister. “When they see that we keep marketing Israel as usual, it projects business as usual.”
But the “business-as-usual” message is not echoed at the top ranks of the government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described a country under threat of nuclear annihilation by Iran, a seasonal rain of rockets from the Gaza Strip and now a frightening new wave of vigilante terror.
Uri Steinberg, Israel’s tourism commissioner for North America, views Netanyahu’s alarmist notes as an unfortunate, if necessary, hindrance to the ministry’s mission of convincing the world that Israel is a safe destination.
“The desperation of some messaging is unhelpful to tourism, but it is inevitable,” he said. “After all, survival has to come first.”
It’s a conundrum Israel has long faced, said Dexter Van Zile, Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accurate in Middle East Reporting in America.
“Israel is in a propaganda war and it has a double message,” he said. “On one hand it wants to prove that it is a place where Jews can live a normal life … [but] it also faces an adversary that wants to destroy or exercise a veto over Jewish normalcy.”
Van Zile recalls consulting Israeli officials in 2007, hoping to address the messaging paradox.
“They were saying, ‘Look, we want to maintain tourism but at the same time we want people to understand the threat that Israelis face,’ ” he said.
On both fronts, the threat is potentially existential. The Jewish state’s tourism industry earned $4.4 billion in 2012, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, not an insignificant part of the gross domestic product of $300 billion.
The fact remains that for some residents of the Jewish state, the recent unrest exists only in headlines and on television. That’s a stance expressed by artist Ben-Zion David, who makes custom jewelry in a studio in Jaffa, the oldest part of Tel Aviv.
“It’s frightening when you see it on TV,” he said, “but in real life it’s like nothing is happening.”