Instead of spending hard earned Israeli tax money and letting the ministry of tourism waste it on campaigns, that are usually pretty useless anyway, why not just spend half that amount and pay the hotels to make their pricing more normal so that mortals can actually afford to come to Israel. We (my family, two adults and two children) are coming this summer. But never again (and no I am not Anti Semitic or Zionist), but I could go to Spain, Turkey or any other Mediteranean country for a month for what it is costing me for two weeks in Israel. Lower the prices and tourists will come !!

We usually come every Fall to visit. Not this year. Prices for Hotels and Car rentals are way too high. We have checked prices, and Paris is cheaper than Israel, so we are once again visiting the City of Lights, and saving money. Ive been writing about this for years, but no one does anything. We love Israel, but cant affords to come as often as we'd like, between the Hotels and the air fares.

vacation in Israel is rather expensive. But if you think GB is any cheaper you are sadly mistaking. I do not mean to sound arrogant and will gladly go on vacation to Spain or Turkey too, but Israel is Israel.

Maybe if the 2 star hotels branding themselves 3 star and charging 4 star prices realized they were killing the Israeli tourism economy, well maybe things would change. Coming from the UK, Asia or even the US and Canada and the rest of the European continent, are a heck of a lot cheaper!!

to the ministry of Tourism. It is heart wrenching to see good dedicated people not being able to show their support for Israel by travelling there. I wasn't implying for a second that London is any cheaper. Not at all, but every other Mediteranean country (even Italy) is cheaper and rightly or wrongly that is the arena that Israel is competing in. If Israeli tourism wants quantity, it will have to make it self more cost competitive. It certainly has more than enough to attract people with, now they just need to get the pricing right. I used to work in hotels in Israel 25 years ago, I know their model. It goes like this. If a hotel has 100 tourists (the numbers are just for demonstration), then each tourist pays $1, BUT, if they only have 1 tourist, then that guy will have to pay $100. Most other "normal" countries try discounting when they don't get the numbers!!

It is one of the most expensive places. We used to visit every summer, but given the prices, this year we will have to find an alternative. Hotels are exorbitantly priced. Car rentals (when adding all insurances) are double those anywhere else, and in general one gets the feeling that one is being ripped off at every opportunity. Attitudes of those involved in tourism are at times less than friendly. A simple example....Last year, I tried booking a "zimmer" at Shoresh (in the Judean Hills, on the road to Jerusalem), and sent them several emails over a period of a week. No response from them. I finally had to get a friend of mine in Israel to call them and ask them to respond to my emails, and only then did they finally respond. When they did respond, they were "upset" at me for sending emails rather than callig them on the phone. Given the time differences betwen here (Chicago, IL) and israel, it is difficult to get them on the phone. The office is apparently not manned (as we later found out) beyond 8AM to 5PM. There are very few (if any) moderately priced hotels. In the center of the country, most hotels are located either in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and are high priced. It is perhaps the only country where no hotels exist at or near the international airport. Most places around the world have various tiers of hotels by airports, apparently Ben Gurion airport is an exception.

but I myself prefer different approach. I do not want government involvement one way or the other. I'd rather market take care of this.

Let the market take care of this? It hasn't done too well at taking care of this for the past 40+ years. Whenever there's a downturn in Tourism (I was Controller for a large Israeli Hotel for close to ten years) the last thing on anyone's mind was to lower prices, except for Internal (Israeli) tourism. The ripoff feeling that a prev writer alluded to is correct. Every year, I vow never to be ripped off again, but... I still come to visit family. Except this year, when we'll go to Paris: it's cheaper!

I hate to say that I would love to come back to Israel for a holiday, its been three years since I last visited, but the hotels are way too expensive compared to a lot of other places in the world and a lot are very poor quality...its a shame but so true.

Have been to Israel 14 times. Wanted desperately to be there in July of 2007, but the air fare and hotel costs were exhorbitant. Did finally come in November of 2008, air fare lower but still too high. Hotel, kibbutz type, was reasonable. Now look at El Al fare for July/August. Hotels in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv quite expensive. No surprise, when the world economy is in the soup, prices either come down of numbers of tourists do.

Zimmer is usually owned by a family, sometimes old people. So if they're technologically incompetent, they don't answer mails.