277,700 visitors entered Israel in September 2022 including 28,000 who left the country on the same day, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports. This figure is down 39% from the record number of 436,500 visitors in 2019, before the Covid pandemic. The September figure is disappointing for a month in which many Diaspora Jews traditionally visit the country for the holidays and Israel's tourism recovery lags behind the global average which exceeded 60% of pre-Covid numbers in July.
Restrictions on the entry of foreign tourists into Israel were only fully removed in March and the Ministry of Tourism expects the number of visitors to Israel in 2022 to be in the 2.2 million to 2.5 million range, well below the 2019 record of 4.55 million.
Between January and September 2022, 1.8 million visitors came to Israel compared with 3.5 million in January-September 2019.
In contrast, the number of Israelis traveling abroad has already exceeded the 2019 pre-Covid record. In September 2022, 967,100 Israelis traveled abroad, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports, up from the previous record of 928,900 in September 2019.
Between January and September 2022, Israelis made 2,096,600 trips abroad compared with 2,380,400 in January-September 2019, Globes reports.
