Israel to open rep office in India
With each passing year, Israel is attracting more Indians. To cash in on the huge Indian market, Israel’s immediate short-term goal is to set up its Tourism Office in Mumbai to market the nation further.
SANJEEV BHAR As
the number of Indians travelling to Israel is rising, the country is now planning to open a tourism office in Mumbai to augur its plan to attract more Indian visitors. In a recent interaction with TravTalk, Alon Ushpiz, Ambassador of Israel to India said, “We are planning to open our tourism office in Mumbai, which is our short-term goal and therefore expect it to function within this year. Our Tourism Ministry acknowledges India as an important market and this is a step towards stepping it further.”
Also for the fact that India has such a strong Jewish community for over 2500 years makes it an important nation for Israel. “This is an interesting cocktail of Israeli mix in India and other way round that I have not seen with any other country in my over two decades of service,” Ushpiz remarked. He emphasised that Israel’s relation with India has been that of an existential one. “We cooperate in many areas of economic concerns from agriculture to Defense to energy. Tourism is yet another dimension that is coming of age and due to the strong foundation of shared history, shared values, interests and challenges,” he added.
Growing Numbers
In the last 3-4 years, there has been a rise in number of Indian coming to Israel. “We received an annual inbound traffic from India to a count of 40000 in 2011 and are now expecting it to reach 50000 by end of 2013. Our approach is to actively look at promoting the leisure, pilgrimage and MICE capabilities of our country to attract the attention of travel agents,” Ushpiz said.
The country is also going to market itself in India based on intellectual and spiritual belief for this year. He added, “We are in fact investing huge amount of energy to create better tourism infrastructure, easing Visa procedure for Indians, taking initiatives to improve flight connectivity and even adapting ourselves to Indian taste be it food, comfort that they look forward to in Israel.”
Connectivity
The fact that the Tourism Ministry of Israel acknowledges India as an important market for inbound tourist traffic it is taking keen interest to increase the connectivity between the two land mass. Israel Ambassador to India had a recent meeting with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India to discuss increase in frequency of its national carrier between Tel Aviv and Mumbai. “We wish to increase the frequency of flights and are working on the possibility to have chartered flights as well for which we are quite upbeat,” he summed.