The open skies policy and the low dollar have contributed to Israelis taking advantage of the relative low costs of international travel, with a marked increase from last year\’s travel data, according to information from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
The first half of 2016 saw a 15.6% increase in the number of Israelis flying abroad when compared to the same timeframe in 2015. This translates to 2.55 million Israelis having travelled abroad between January and June of this year.
Data from the CBS show 566,000 Israeli exits from the country in June, which is an increase of 15.3% from June 2015.
While Israelis are travelling abroad in droves, tourism to Israel itself is not doing terribly well. In the first half of 2016, 1.38 million tourism entries by to Israel were recorded, which was a decrease of 1.3% from the preceding year\’s first half. Going back one more year (before Operation Protective Edge), the data show a more significant decrease from 2014 to 2016: 18%.
Those Israelis who travelled abroad visited Eastern Europe (18%); sunbathing holidays in Rhodes, Crete, and Antalya (15%), Italy (12%); North America (11%), the Iberian Peninsula (11%), and the UK (6%).