Splashed all over prime-time Israeli TV over the past few weeks has been the beautiful face of Noa Tishby, fronting a new government campaign in which every patriotic Israeli should invite a tourist to visit them in the Holy Land. Every Israeli brings one tourist – someone they know through work or a trip abroad. "Everyone brings one" - a brilliant and simple plan to boost the economy and our international image! Why didn’t I think of it?
The trying-too-hard-to-be-cute-and-humorous commercials are everywhere.
In each clip, Tishby instructs viewers to click on the Tourism Ministry’s website, where we are shown very cute postcards pitching trips to Israel. They feature clever slogans like “Forget Facebook, see what a real wall looks like” next to a picture of the Western Wall, or “Get Down and Dirty” accompanying a photo of a happy bather slathered in Dead Sea mud. If you send out these funky invitations via Twitter or Facebook or plain old e-mail, you automatically enter a draw that can score your invitee a free vacation to Israel.
Now Tishby is a lovely actress who does admirable work for Israel. So it pains me that she is the face of what is probably one of the stupidest government campaigns ever launched here (and the competition is stiff; there have been various stupid and wasteful government campaigns in our nation’s history. Remember the one last year trying to scare Israelisliving abroad to come home that was so offensive it had to be pulled off the air?).
This one isn’t offensive, but the cost of all that airtime and fancy web work is a scandalous waste of our tax shekels. Why? Because inviting folks to Israel is not the problem. Getting people to want to come to Israel is not the problem. I know a lot of people around the world and nearly all of them express a desire to see the country. Some of my best friends and family members want to come to Israel. Invitations are not the issue - trust me, I know, I’ve invited them. Including the formal engraved kind, in the form of invitations to my kids bar and bat mitzvah, and so have my friends, to their weddings and britot and other celebrations. I’ve invited them from the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
A tiny fraction of them have actually even showed up.
There are two reasons why more tourists don’t come to Israel, and they have nothing to do with folks not getting invited. The first obstacle, of course, is our image as a war-torn country and the perception that is dangerous to be here. If you’re watching the news out of Israel right now, what with rockets falling in the south, and residents running to bomb shelters, and warning shots into Syria, it understandably dampens enthusiasm.
But fear is actually the secondary problem. Because there are, in fact, tourists so motivated to come that it overcomes the fear factor.
The massive barrier to more tourism is cost. Airline tickets to Israel areincredibly expensive and keep rising, particularly from the United States, one of the countries where the average Israeli is most likely to know somebody to invite. Sadly, the most insane prices are those when people can travel - during summer vacation, when both flights and hotels can easily double.
How do we know that cost is a factor? Among Jews living abroad, all you have to do is look at Birthright Israel: when the price is right, young American Jews line up around the block to come. And then there are the Christian pilgrims. I recently interviewed an expert on Christian tourism and she told me clearly the main reason we only see a fraction of the fervent flock who would love to see the Holy Land is the expense.
No one knows that better than we Israelis who have chosen to vacation in Turkey or Greece because it was cheaper than a hotel vacation in peak season in our own country. If we’re choosing other, more affordable destinations, why shouldn’t foreign tourists?
It’s all about the money. Like the money that the government threw away making the pretty campaign encouraging us to invite people. Instead of this absurd waste of an invitation, why isn’t the tourism ministry busy packaging tickets, accommodation, tours and transportation so that the average foreign tourist can afford them and access them easily? Why not, instead this loopy campaign aimed at Israelis, keep pushing the messages to the proper target audience - foreign tourists. Or, if they really want us to convince people to come, how about subsidizing a "friends and family" discount for those of us who get large numbers of tourists to visit on a regular basis?
The only theory I can come up with for the creation of this silly campaign is political - that our Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov, best known for his hard partying after hours, wants to show his constituents he’s working hard, or maybe he just wants to hang out with Noa Tishby. I hate to knock Misezhnikov - my friends in the tourism business say that he is the best guy we’ve had in the job for a long time, and I actually think a guy who knows how to have a good time is the right guy to convince people that they can travel to Israel and have fun.
But really - if he seriously thinks that the way to increase tourism is through Facebook invitations, he has indeed been drinking too much.
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