Some 34,500 tourists visited Israel in September, 128% more than last year when Israel was in the midst of its third Coronavirus wave, but still 91.5% less than September 2019, when 405,000 tourists entered Israel.
September, during which the Jewish High Holidays are usually celebrated, is a peak season for tourism in Israel.
In the first nine months of 2021, about 243,500 tourists visited Israel, compared to 782,700 in the corresponding period in 2020, but still 69% more than the same period in 2019.
The Israel Ministry of Tourism is working on an outline to allow vaccinated tourists to visit Israel from the beginning of November, in order to rehabilitate the tourism industry and to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of people working in the industry can continue doing so.
Israel fears that tourists will import a COVID-19 variant that will push the infection rate back up, and therefore is closely monitoring and constantly changing its guidelines on this issue.
A senior official in one of the main hotel chains in Israel has told TPS that the vast majority of tourists from abroad have canceled their reservations for 2021, and that the focus and hope is now on 2022.