It was 10 p.m. in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night and the bar of the Brown TVL Hotel was filled with locals, diplomats, and ex-pats sipping on watermelon martinis and mojitos.
What was missing were the tourists.
"It is devastating us
economically," said Leon Avigad, the developer of Brown Hotels, a small
collection of boutique hotels in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. "We are losing
tons of money by the minute. The entire profit from the summer is wiped
out."
In 2013, more than 3.5 million
visitors came to Israel, pumping more than $12 billion into the
country’s economy. According to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism 2013 was
a record year for the country and until recently, 2014 was on pace to
be 15 percent ahead of last year.
"Obviously the past two weeks has
caused fewer visits," said Geoffrey Weill, a spokesman for the Tourism
Ministry. "Had the year continued normally we would have seen that
growth. That will obviously be affected now."
One of the many casualties of the
current Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been Israel’s booming tourism
business,which can account for as much as six percent of the nation’s
gross domestic product.
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