IN recent articles published in Travel Weekly, Iwas delighted to read that the Foreign Office has decided to invite tour operators and key travel industry leaders to discuss improvements to the way travel advice is distributed.
I am the director of the Israel Government Tourist Office, UKand Ireland. As Israel is being constantly harmed by the advisories issue by the British Foreign Office, Ifeel compelled to voice my concerns to the travel trade.
The Foreign Office is continually very harsh with its advice on travel to Israel. During the Iraq crisis, which took place at the end of last year, Britons were urged not to travel to Israel. The advisory urged leading tour operators to pull their clients from the resort of Eilat.
Taba and Aqaba border Eilat directly and, surprisingly, no advisories were issued to dissuade people from travelling to Egypt and Jordan. This appears to be totally illogical.
Even after the crisis period had ended, it took an unnecessarily long time to amend the Foreign Office advisory on travel to Israel. Consequently, there have been serious repercussions on the tourism business to Israel from the UK.
Certain leading tour operators have evaluated their losses on selling the destination of Eilat and have decided to discontinue all charter flights for the rest of the season. We have incurred millions of pounds worth of losses and specialist UKtour operators are being forced to reduce the number of personnel, or face bankruptcy, as in the case of Destination Red Sea.
I feel that it is extremely perilous that the fate of a tourism destination is placed in the hands of one government official, who evaluates the safety of a destination according to uncertain and unfounded criteria.
Millions of tourists travel to Israel every year and are perfectly safe. I call upon all my colleagues in the travel industry to join forces in an attempt to change attitudes and approaches to issuing travel advisories.
EliezerHod, Director, IGTOUK andIreland, Israel Government Tourist Office, London