Israel to stimulate Chinese market by simplifying visa application and movie marketing

BEIJING - In order to highlight the importance of tourism, Israeli Ambassador Mr. Ma Teng attended the road show and gave speech. He said that at present, there were more than twenty thousand Chinese tourists visiting Israel every year and the number was expected to grow steadily. He hoped through the efforts made by Israel Ministry of Tourism, Israel government and that of Chinese tourism industry, it was able to reach the target of attracting a hundred thousand Chinese tourists per year in the near future. He also pointed out now that Israel had changed visa policy for Chinese tourists and would further simplify visa procedures for both individual and group travellers, an ultimately goal of achieving a two-side visa-free policy would be highly expected.
Fu Taiyang, the Chief Representative of China Office, indicated that Chinese tourists to Israel showed a 30% annual growth since the signing of Chinese citizens travel agreement in 2009. In 2012, Israeli welcomed a total of 4,000,000 foreign tourists with 22,000 coming from China. During first half of the year 2013, the number of Chinese tourists has increased by 30%, which is predicted to reach 28,000 this year.
He said “In order to achieve the preliminary goal of attracting 100,000 passengers, we have taken a series of initiatives. Recently, the Israeli Embassy had made several changes to its visa policies including: issuing non-agency individual tourist visas; simplifying the procedure of business visas; simplifying the procedure of visa application to citizens holding household registrations of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. For example, residents of these three cities will not need to provide proof of assets anymore and so does those who have United States or Schengen visas.” Generally speaking, tourists can therefore get their visas within five days.
In addition, Israel Ministry of Tourism also planned to further enhance the awareness of Israeli tourism using marketing practices through movies. A film directed by the famous Chinese director Lu Chuan had completed its on-location shooting in Dead Sea, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa in Israel in April this year and the movie is expected to release nationwide in October. This is the first Chinese movie shooting in Israel since the establishment of diplomatic relations of the two nations, which enjoyed a fully support by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. Meanwhile, the Tourism Bureau also plans to launch "Film Festival" related products with a number of travel agencies, hoping to attract more Chinese tourists through film promotion.
This roadshow is seen to be an important initiative to promote Israeli tourism resources and this is the second time Israel Ministry of Tourism organized the activity. With the success of its taking place in Guangzhou and Shanghai previously, more than 20 representatives including Israel Airlines, the Israeli ground travel operators, diamond companies and skin care products companies had participated in the show this time in Beijing. Fu Taiyang said that the first road show event had attracted about 400 travel agencies in China, while this year there were more than 650 industrial responses, showing Chinese market’s increasing interests to Israel. Therefore, in order to allow industrial players to know more about Israeli tourism products, the tourism bureau will organize more familiarization tours for professionals to experience the charm of Israel, a land of mystery.
On the other hand, Israel Ministry of Tourism will pay a visit to the Director of Chinese Tourism Administration, Shao Qiwei in August to discuss further bilateral tourism communication; in the meanwhile, the tourist board is also going to meet with the Civil Aviation Authority of China to seek the opportunity of increasing airline capacity to Israel. At present, Israeli Airline offers direct flights to Israel from both Beijing and Hong Kong, and hopefully there will be more direct flights in the future.

Sourced: TravelDailyNews