120,000 Israeli visitors in first five months of 2008
10% rise in Israelis' visits to US
All times record in Israeli entries to North America expected to be broken this year
About half of tourists from the Middle East who arrived in the United States last year were Israelis, figures released by the US Department of Commerce show.
According to the data, 2007 saw a 12% rise in Middle Easterners' visits and a 10% rise in the visits of Israelis to the US.
A total of 619,818 visitors from the Middle East arrived in the US last year, 313,000 of them from Israel. The rest of the tourists came from the following countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, as well as Cyprus and Turkey.
The data released by the US Department of Commerce show an 8.9% rise in the visits of Middle Easterners in the first five months of 2008. According to these figures, some 120,000 Israelis visited the US between January and May, with the most significant rise (29.8%) recorded in the month of April, during the Passover holiday.
The data was compared to the same periods in 2007. Last year, in its five-year assessment on the entries of visitors to the US, the Department of Commerce estimated that the number of Israeli tourists would grow by only 4% in 2008. This prediction was recently raised to 10% in light of the increase recorded since the beginning of the year.
According to all forecasts, the all times record in Israelis' entries to the US will be broken this year. The previous record was set in the year 2000, totaling 325,000 entries. A year later, following the September 11 terror attacks, the number of tourists entering the US dropped significantly, and 2001 ended with only 305,000 entries.
In the two following years, due to the stricter rules imposed on the issue of entry visas to the US, the drop in the number of Israeli tourists and others continued, while 2004 saw a recovery in these numbers.
