Israel Welcomes US and Other Foreign Travelers by May 23

Israel’s tourist sector is looking to welcome foreign travelers including those from the US starting May 23. The country wants to reap the benefits of its rapid COVID19 vaccination rollout. It was announced that vaccinated tourists can enter the country starting May 23.

As international travel remains low, airlines are looking to add flights to Tel Aviv. Brian Znotins, vice president of network and schedule planning at American Airlines said that because of the vaccines, “Italies and Frances are a little behind Israel in terms of when we anticipate travel will reopen”.

The biggest percentage of tourists will come from the US. American Airlines is going to add flights from New York by May and from Miami later this month. Znotins said that “We have these wide bodies and not much else to do with them”. American is going to use Boeing 777 that has been parked when the pandemic started. Znotins added that “we think Tel Aviv will outperform the rest of the transatlantic market”.

United also has 13 weekly flights to Tel Aviv from Newark and San Francisco. It is also going to add three more flights from Chicago and another two from Newark.

What Israel Tourism Looks Like

Israel already vaccinated more than half of its population. However, it is still a challenge to keep the infections down once they open next month.

Tourism Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen said that “we do not want to risk any of the variants that might come to Israel and jeopardize normalcy”.  She described Israel as the first country to exit the pandemic. She added that the country “should harness this advantage to our economic and tourism benefit”.

Since it is a serious concern to prevent the spread of the virus, Israel is only going to start with small groups of tourists. July is the soonest date for all tourists to go to Israel.

Israel isn’t the only one that opened its tourism. Greece opened its border to most parts of EU countries, the US, and non-EU members. Greece announced that it won’t quarantine its visitors.