There’s no way to summarize a weeklong press trip to Israel in just one column. So I’ve taken two.
For the background on our amazing journey, see my column from last week, One Step Ahead of the Rockets: An Unforgettable Press Trip to Israel | Travel Research Online. But if you’re looking for details on how to plan a great trip, here are some highlights from the itinerary put together for our group of 20 international trade press by Ellen Shapiro of the Israel Ministry of Tourism and our tour guide, Mika Rabinovich. So here goes:
In this country the size of New Jersey, home to the three great Abrahamic religions, you can find mountains, cities, farms, Biblical sites, Herod’s summer palace, the Bahai’i Temple, the spots where Sarah was buried and Jesus was crucified and Mohammed ascended to heaven. Five-star restaurants serve fish pulled fresh from the Mediterranean and wines made from grapes in the Judean hills. But this being the Middle East, no trip is complete without a visit to the desert. Try the Dead Sea, actually a 4-million-year-old lake in the Judean Desert, 34% salt and the lowest point on earth. Just 90 minutes from Jerusalem or two hours from the bars and beaches of Tel Aviv, it’s a different world. We did a day trip to the Milos Hotel, a “Greek-style village” offering mineral-rich mud to cover ourselves against the sun, towels and chaise lounges, showers and a pool, a spa, a lunch buffet, and easy access to the healing salt waters; day passes run 350 shekels (about $95). (Note there are many hotels along the strip from which to choose.)
At the brand new and exclusive R48 Hotel and Garden on Rothschild Boulevard in downtown Tel Aviv, the 22-seat Chef’s Table, a Michelin nominee, was fully booked six months out when the terrorists hit on October 7. The restaurant has remained closed—”it’s a place to take a photo to post on Instagram—happy, happy, happy; it wasn’t appropriate to remain open,” they say. But now it will reopen this month. The hotel’s “more accessible” brasserie restaurant, meanwhile, “is the hottest place in the city, packed three months in advance.” And the hotel itself is a breathtaking work of love by a global team including Canadian philanthropists Jeremy Schwartz and Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books and Music, who brought the designer of her private home in Malibu to design a property at “the next level of hospitality in downtown Tel Aviv, for a market arriving on private jets.” There are 11 exclusive suites, a rooftop pool and landscaping by the designer of New York’s High Line, at rates beginning about $800 a night.
“The world is headed toward luxury tourism for sure,” the general manager told me. “And yes, that market will come back. I’m planning on surviving 2024 and coming back in 2025.”
(Also noteworthy is the new Hotel Botanica Haifa. Inspired by the Bahai’i Gardens at whose foot it sits, every floor of this adults-only property is decorated in a different color; some of its elegant 163 rooms and 5 suites have baths overlooking the sea. It was fully booked on October 5 in advance of a world cruise that was supposed to sail from Haifa.)
Jason Gardner, sales manager for incoming tourism for Isrotel, which runs 23 hotels across the country (including the Virtuoso-preferred Beresheet in the desert), and (including the five-star Orient in Jerusalem and the Alberto in Tel Aviv, in which we stayed) said the company has 11 hotels in the pipeline, including some in Greece and Italy that will open this year under the brand name Aluma. Isrotel has purchased The Savoy in Rome and manages the Eau Palm Beach in the United States, where it also “is looking for more opportunities.”
“We’re expecting a strong rebound,” Gardner said. “We were breaking records before October 7 and we definitely believe it’s going to come back.” In the meantime, their hotels in Israel have been housing families displaced by the attacks—many of whom arrived “without shoes, without clothes.”
“You have to know when to put business decisions aside and offer what you have,” Gardener said.
Soon they became part of the hotel, coming into the kitchen to help cook and mingling with the tourists, who specifically asked to remain in the hotel with them. To date, there have been 39 babies born and two weddings.
What advice would he give travel advisors with customers who are nervous about the Middle East right now? “My experience is that you should bring it up and say that what you hearing on the news is not what you’re going to see. There’s so much positivity, so much beauty. I believe that times like these, when you see this solidarity, are just the times to come. There’s a lot to learn from the way we carry on day to day. It’s the most amazing time to be here.”
On a walking tour around Tel Aviv, we strolled into Neve Tzedek, the first neighborhood to be settled by Jews outside the walls of Jaffa, in 1887, where I got to chatting with a young couple from Texas. Brought together in part by a mutual interest in religion, they “wanted to visit the Holy Land and Rome on our honeymoon,” said Josh and Hannah Abraham, “and even after October 7 we didn’t want to cancel; we wanted to come and see it and show our support. We haven’t experienced war at all while we’ve been here; there are yellow ribbons for the hostages but we haven’t felt any danger. It’s beautiful.”
In a tiny country surrounded by enemies, every soldier is important. Perhaps that’s why Israel is renowned for its LGBTQ culture, bringing an unexpected market to the religious Middle East. Tel Aviv’s LGBT Center opened 15 years ago to offer support and community, with services from counseling to a senior club to a musical show depicting gay life. Among those fallen in October was a gay man killed six days before his wedding; his story “really touched a lot of hearts and started a public discussion of gay rights and the rights of their partners,” says our guide here, Ortom Adi. “This is the best city in the world for gay people. There’s no gay district in Tel Aviv; all of Tel Aviv is a gay district.”
Don’t miss the ancient city of Jaffa, where Cassiopeia was saved from kidnapping, and Jonah tried to flee his fate until he was swallowed by a whale, and St. Peter came to convert the Christians, and Napoleon walked the streets in 1799 but decided the place wasn’t worth the effort it would take to conquer it.
It’s a very young and high-tech kind of country, and apparently, they understand the value of reels in getting your story out on social media. The new free laser show in Jerusalem takes only about 20 minutes and requires no tickets or planning, and it’s pleasant to stand in the hills above the Old City in the evening breeze. Also interesting is the light show in Zedekiah’s Cave, a giant quarry under the Old City, which tells of the last king of Judea, whom they say escaped through these caverns when the Babylonians destroyed the first temple in 422 BCE. Herod the Great and Suleiman the Magnificent used its rocks to rebuild the city’s walls—and today, the giant cavern is available for private events. The brand new Tower of David Museum also has many interactive exhibits, including a three-minute animated film and two Sound and Light shows, one on the history of Jerusalem and one on Kind David.
Only in Israel will you find a distillery based purely on chemistry. “We all build on something that came before,” says Bennett Kaplan, who set about making the perfect vodka (and also bourbon) in Jerusalem. It’s made from the “softest red winter wheat from the Champagne region of France, the best grain in the world,” from which he removes all the methanol using modern-day chemistry. The 12th-century rabbi Maimonides prescribed a drink a day, Kaplan notes; his Visitors Center is open all week, but the best tour is on Fridays, when you get cheese and bread and two cocktails for 95 shekels (about $25).
“Every time I see a new road building park I am amazed by the energy and determination and unstoppable creativity and optimism for building this little utopia, with all its grand goals and tiny details, in the constant presence of war,” says Rivka Rappaport, a teacher who in good times also leads tours for visiting families.
Travel advisors, meanwhile, are hoping that a few quiet months in the Middle East will bring back the US travelers. “Communication is key in this kind of instance; you don’t want to ignore it, you need to get out in front and put people’s minds at ease,” says Toni Day of Toni Tours, who has a group of 24 headed to Egypt and Jordan in September on a trip with Mayflower Cruises and Tours. “So I’ve been proactive. When the conflict started I sent an email saying, ‘I’m sure you are aware of what’s going on in the Middle East. But this is an area where there is always tension, and that doesn’t mean it’s unsafe to travel. I am on top of it and as we get closer we will make decisions. And Mayflower will not run the trip if the risk is too high. So with all of that, let’s just wait.’ And people still are making payments toward the land portion.”
For now, she is “keeping my fingers crossed that things settle down,” and putting off booking air.
“Honestly, though,” she adds, “right now it seems that there are travel advisories for the entire world.”
Here’s our itinerary, FYI:
Tour guide — Mika Rabinowitz
- April 1, Tel Aviv. Hotel Atlas 65
- April 2: Day in the North. Caesarea National Park, Haifa – Bahai’i Gardens, tour of Shumacher and Botanica Hotels
- April 3: Orient Hotel, Jerusalem. IMTM, Castel Winery, Machane Yehuda market tour
- April 4: Zedekiah cave, The Old City, Tower of David – the new Jerusalem Museum, National Library, Governor’s Palace promenade for light show
- April 5: Dead Sea, Amtsyahu Ecological Park, Ein Gedi, Ahava Cosmetics factory
- April 6: Tel Aviv. Hotel Alberto. Neve Tzedek, Dolphinarium beach, sunset yoga at Charles Clore Park
- April 7: Tel Aviv. Graffiti tour, Pride Center, Jaffa flea market, Old Jaffa at sunset
- April 8: Departures
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.