It is clear to the hotels that people who want to rest on Passover will look for hotels without evacuees. As of today, the number of evacuees who are still in the various hotels is significantly lower than before, about 30 thousand, and the various chains have begun to reduce them to concentrated hotels, in order to completely evacuate other hotels. Other hotels will host evacuees alongside regular guests, and claim that this is really not expected to disturb the various parties.
“This year’s Passover holiday finds the industry in a unique situation that has never been here before,” says the CEO of the Hotel Association, Sivan Detauker: “The hotels have been a warm home for six months now for evacuees trying to survive the hardships of the war, and at the same time, there is an increasing demand from vacationers for a vacation . The process takes place when the industry is facing a personnel crisis of knowledge like this, when over 2,000 workers are missing and when the hotels and B&Bs in the north are closed. All of these pose a significant challenge when it comes to demand and supply, which we manage sensitively while taking into account the existing constraints.”
Assaf Ben Dov, Vice President of Marketing and Sales of Africa Israel Hotels, which owns the hotel brands, Vert, Crown Plaza, Poly House, Indigo, Bay View, and more, explains how the demand looks like this year in his various hotels: “This year, the inventory of rooms available to us for accommodation is more limited than in previous years, due to The special situation we are in. We continue to host evacuees in hotels from the north and the south. At the same time, we are witnessing high occupancy rates in hotels in Eilat and the Dead Sea throughout the holiday and in the central areas and Jerusalem, with an emphasis on Seder night. Compared to this point in time last year (3 weeks before Seder night), accordingly and with an emphasis on Eilat and the Dead Sea, the prices are now higher than last year and those who knew how to order in advance, profited.”
“As we get closer to Passover, we will continue to see the strengthening of demand,” says Gil Gamaliel, Vice President of Customer Experience and Human Resources at Diezenhaus Group. “It is still not on the scale of a year ago, but it is getting close.” This is a trend we see in both outbound and inbound tourism. There is an interesting trend in domestic tourism, because the range of domestic tourism has narrowed, because naturally the northern region has partly fallen out of the loop, high demands are being created in other parts of the country, and in many places it is no longer possible to find vacation spots for the Passover region.”