{"id":596016,"date":"2026-08-26T00:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T00:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/596016\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T00:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T00:22:18","slug":"jerusalem-old-city-vendors-say-reduced-tourism-harming-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/596016\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerusalem Old City vendors say reduced tourism harming businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shopkeepers across the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem\u2019s Old City<\/a> say the weakened state of inbound tourism to Israel over the last three years, since the outbreak of war, has put businesses under prolonged strain.<\/p>\n

Speaking this week to The Jerusalem Post, vendors pointed to a shortage of flights, high airfares, and lingering fears abroad over security as chief reasons traffic into Israel has been suffering.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe day-to-day tourism is horrible,\u201d Eitan, the owner of Mira, a family-owned shop in the Jewish Quarter, said. \u201cNot too many people. There\u2019s not the traffic that there should be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main problem, he said, was that there were a reduced number of flights and that the flights that were operating were too expensive for many people, and people are afraid to come.”<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a lot of people who cancel their \u2014 like, sometimes the airline canceled their trip, sometimes they could not come because of the prices,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce you have limited seats available, not everybody can come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnAn image from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. August 24, 2026. (credit: SAM HALPERN)<\/p>\n

Eitan, whose family has lived in the Old City since 1968, operated the business since 1984, and has been through \u201call the intifadas\u201d and \u201call the wars,\u201d said that a meaningful recovery from the tourism slump will remain out of sight until the situation with the airlines improves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs long as the airlines are not coming back to Israel, I don\u2019t see any solution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Similar concerns were voiced elsewhere in the Old City.<\/p>\n

Dia, a long-time vendor in Jerusalem\u2019s Old City Arab Quarter whose family operates the well-known \u201cAlabama \u2013 The Heart of Dixie\u201d shop, said the decline in tourism had left business \u201cvery, very slow,\u201d with many visitors still hesitant to come because of the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s very safe, the Old City,\u201d he said, but due to the image Israel has had abroad since the war began on October 7, 2023, business remained low.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree years now, nobody comes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hassan, a souvenir vendor near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem\u2019s Christian Quarter, also painted a negative picture, describing business as \u201cvery weak\u201d and saying there were \u201cno tourists now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalled that before the war broke out, there was a period of eight to ten months when business was good, \u201cbut now, it\u2019s zero.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hassan continued, saying that in his view, the solution lay in bolstering the number of flights coming into Israel.<\/p>\n

In the Armenian Quarter, Garo Sandrouni, who operates a ceramics gallery with his wife, Sonia, said that even since the latest major round of strikes between Israel and Iran concluded earlier this year, he had not seen any improvement in the number of tourists coming through.<\/p>\n

He said, though, that with the Jewish New Year<\/a> coming up next month, vendors expected to see some progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, everybody is expecting in September that it (the amount of inbound tourism) will be much more. Let’s see. But now, there is not much difference from what it was like three months ago or four months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other vendors, Garo pointed to the cost of flights as the primary barrier choking off tourism to the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re much more expensive than before, and some people are also afraid to come,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sandrouni\u00a0added that the fear came from three places.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are afraid, first from the war, secondly from flights if they cancel, and thirdly from the expensive tickets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He recalled clients who became stranded in Israel after foreign carriers canceled service, with some eventually traveling to Jordan to fly home.<\/p>\n

Sandrouni added that the hits his business has taken over the last three years have been the worst in his four decades of operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been here for like 40, 45 years on this street,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is the worst thing that we have witnessed. I mean, from the October war until today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Post in June, tourism expert Dr. Eran Ketter pointed to broad structural problems hampering inbound tourism to Israel.<\/p>\n

Looking specifically at the US, historically Israel\u2019s largest source market, Ketter pointed to geopolitical instability, the stronger shekel, limited air capacity, and higher travel costs as factors suppressing demand.<\/p>\n

Tourism expert: Problems around tourism limit visitors to just the highly committed<\/p>\n

\u201cPutting all of this together, we\u2019re coming into a situation that only people who really want to travel to Israel, and can afford it, are traveling at the moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ketter said greater political stability would be the \u201cnumber one enabler,\u201d allowing the industry to move from a nearly three-year \u201csurvival state\u201d into \u201cgrowth mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stability, he added, would also encourage airlines to resume service, bringing more competition and potentially cheaper fares.<\/p>\n

Tourism Ministry Director-General Michael Izhakov<\/a>, who spoke to the Post the following month, also identified the lack of flight accessibility as a major bottleneck to inbound tourism.<\/p>\n

Tourism ministry director-general: With no flights, there is no tourism<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there are no flights, there is no tourism,\u201d he said, adding that the ministry was speaking with airlines and the Transportation Ministry and expected a rapid recovery once flights returned.<\/p>\n

\"TourismTourism Ministry Director-General Michael Izhakov. July 2026. (credit: SAM HALPERN)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are waiting only for the flights,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce the flights reopen, we will see a very rapid recovery in inbound tourism to Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ministry<\/a> has also been trying to stimulate demand through marketing and domestic tourism while preparing additional hotel capacity. Izhakov said the ministry had begun targeting Jewish audiences abroad more directly and had shifted some attention toward Israeli tourists when foreign visitors failed to return.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Izhakov and tourism industry leaders met US Ambassador Mike Huckabee as part of the Israel Tourism Recovery Forum, where, according to the ministry, they discussed expanding direct US-Israel flights.<\/p>\n

During the meeting, Huckabee emphasized his personal commitment to promote trips from the US to Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will continue encouraging Americans to visit Israel, experience it firsthand, and discover the reality for themselves,\u201d the ministry quoted the ambassador as saying.<\/p>\n

For the vendors in the Old City who depend on this traffic, though, the recovery of inbound tourism and the expansion of flights into the country are things they say cannot wait.<\/p>\n

Still, despite the economic situation they described, some remained optimistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a positive person,\u201d Eitan said. \u201cI believe things will be good again. When, we don\u2019t know, but hopefully soon. We are here, and whatever God wants to give us, he gives us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shopkeepers across the Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem\u2019s Old City say the weakened state of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[114,37187,42,3794,43,1073,25743,40,38,41,39,2012,136838],"class_list":["post-596016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-business","tag-flights","tag-headlines","tag-jerusalem","tag-news","tag-old-city-jerusalem","tag-rosh-hashana","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-tourism","tag-tourism-ministry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}