Travel in Israel: a pilgrim's country that the wars have emptied and refilled

Who comes to Israel now and why

The visitor count has followed the wars. Tourism reached 3.6 million visitors in 2017 and 4.55 million in 2019, about one visitor for every two Israelis. In 2025, after two years of war, the Ministry of Tourism counted about 1.3 million.

The ministry's figures for 2025 show where they came from. The United States sent 400,000, France 159,000 and the United Kingdom 95,000, together about 55% of the total, followed by Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Canada and Romania. Its survey of the first half of the year found 51% of visitors describing themselves as Jewish, against 66% in 2024. Visitors stayed 9.3 nights on average, against 11.4 the year before, and spent $1,622 each, excluding flights, up from $1,427. Visits to relatives and friends accounted for 45% of trips, business for 12% and leisure for 14%.

The hotels kept running on a different trade. For nearly two years after October 2023 the ministry housed more than 125,000 residents evacuated from the border areas in about 670 hotels and guesthouses, paying them about NIS 7 billion, and by the end of the third quarter of 2025 Israelis had spent more than 13 million nights in the country's hotels. The ministry put NIS 175 million into repairing hotels worn by the long stays, approved grants of more than NIS 180 million for 2,050 new hotel rooms, and in November 2025 ran a first Israeli Tourism Month, which drew about 85,000 people to 18 sites.

Tourism has long mattered more to the economy than its visitor numbers suggest. The World Travel and Tourism Council put its contribution at 6.4% of GDP and 223,000 jobs, 7.9% of employment, in 2010. Israelis are also heavy travellers abroad: in 1993 visitors brought $750 million into the country while Israelis spent $2 billion outside it.

How pilgrims drew the first routes

Travel here began as pilgrimage. Under Ottoman rule Christians from the Mediterranean travelled to the Holy Land through the wars between the empire and Christian states, monasteries and hospices housed them, and in the nineteenth century Thomas Cook's package tours brought the first popular tourism, about 12,000 travellers among them Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 2009, the Ministry of Tourism recorded 54% of 2.7 million visitors as Christian and 39% as Jewish.

Jerusalem took about 3.5 million tourist arrivals in 2017. Its Old City lies in East Jerusalem, which Israel took in 1967 and annexed, and which the international community regards as occupied territory. Within its walls, divided into Armenian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish quarters, stand the Western Wall, the Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The status matters to how the city is sold: the UK Advertising Standards Authority ruled against Israeli tourism advertisements in 2009, 2010 and 2015 for implying that East Jerusalem was part of Israel, and the ministry rejected the rulings. West Jerusalem holds Yad Vashem, the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Mea Shearim and Ein Karem, and the city also has the Israel Museum.

The Christian sites of Galilee cluster around the Sea of Galilee: Capernaum, Tabgha, Magdala and the Mount of Beatitudes, with Nazareth, the site of the Annunciation, inland. The Jesus Trail walks 65 kilometres between them, from Nazareth through Cana to Capernaum. Tiberias and Safed are two of Judaism's four holy cities, and the grave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai at nearby Meron is a pilgrimage site of its own. Haifa has the Bahá'í World Centre and the Shrine of the Báb, and Acre its old city.

Where the cities differ

Each city receives visitors for something different. Tel Aviv, with Jaffa beside it, is the city of beaches, Bauhaus streets and cafés, and is known for its nightlife; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is there. Haifa, a mixed city of several faiths on the slopes of Mount Carmel, holds the Bahá'í terraces and shrine, the Stella Maris monastery, the Cave of Elijah and the Technion. Acre across the bay has its old city with the Knights' Halls and the El-Jazzar Mosque, and the shrine of Bahá'u'lláh.

In Galilee, Safed grew into a centre of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, and its artists' quarter dates from 1920, when the painter Yitzhak Frenkel arrived, followed by his students; its synagogues and galleries are the attraction. Nazareth, called the Arab capital of Israel, has its old city, the Church of the Annunciation and the start of the Jesus Trail. Tiberias overlooks the Sea of Galilee and has hot springs, like Hamat Gader and Hamei Yoav elsewhere. In the south, Beersheba, whose founding is attributed to Abraham, is the regional capital of the Negev and the usual starting point for the Ramon crater and the Incense Route.

Israel has more than 200 museums. The Israel Museum, the national museum in Jerusalem, receives about 800,000 visitors a year, and the Tower of David Museum tells the history of the city.

What visitors eat and drink

Restaurant culture has grown since the 1990s. Jerusalem's cooking blends Sephardi, Kurdish and Ashkenazi Jewish traditions with Palestinian Arab ones. The typically Israeli places to eat are the falafel stand, the hummusia, which serves hummus and little else, the cheap Eastern restaurant that brings a spread of meze salads and grilled meat, and the steakiya with its skewers and the Jerusalem mixed grill. Cafés are meeting places for business as well as company, with outdoor tables, and coffee comes as instant, iced, espresso, Turkish or the milky hafuch; tea is often served with mint. Wine tourism has grown since a wine park was planned between Zichron Ya'akov and Binyamina in 2008, and about a quarter of restaurants were kosher in 2015.

Medical travel is a smaller trade: in 2006, 15,000 foreign visitors came for treatment and brought in $40 million, some for procedures cheaper than at home and some for the Dead Sea.

Which sites UNESCO has listed

Israel accepted the World Heritage Convention on 6 October 1999. Nine properties inside Israel are inscribed, every one of them cultural.

Jerusalem's Old City is not among them; Israel has 18 further sites on its tentative list.

Where the desert and the seas pull visitors

Masada is a rock plateau on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert above the Dead Sea, where Herod built palaces between 37 and 31 BCE. According to Josephus, the Roman siege at the end of the First Jewish-Roman War ended with the suicide of 960 rebels and their families. Below it lie the oasis of Ein Gedi, with its ibex, hyrax and waterfalls, and the Dead Sea itself, known for its buoyancy and for the medical tourists who come to bathe in it. The retreating shore has its own hazard: the US Geological Survey records sinkholes opening in the exposed seabed, which makes building on it dangerous.

Eilat, at the southern tip on the Red Sea, is hot and sunny all year. Its 11 kilometres of coast and its coral reefs draw divers, with water at about 21 to 25°C, and the Eilat Mountains have trails among gazelles and ibex. Ramon Airport opened to serve it in 2019. Of the 190 kilometres of Mediterranean coast, two thirds are open to bathing; Tel Aviv took 2.3 million tourist visits in 2013 and has the Bauhaus White City and the old port town of Jaffa beside it.

The Negev is crossed on foot and by car. Makhtesh Ramon, the erosion crater 38 kilometres long, is the best known, and the desert cities of the Incense Route stand along the old caravan road. The annual bird migrations draw watchers to Eilat and the Hula Valley.

How the country is walked

The Israel National Trail crosses the whole country for about 940 kilometres, from Dan near the Syrian and Lebanese borders to Eilat, and takes 30 to 70 days to walk through. Shorter routes branch from it: the Jerusalem Trail of 40 kilometres into the Old City, the Sea to Sea trail of 89 kilometres from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee, and the Valley of Springs trail of 120 kilometres around the Jordan Valley. Israel has 67 national parks and 190 nature reserves in the Wikipedia account of tourism, and many of them are archaeological sites, Beit Guvrin-Maresha and Sepphoris among them.

Kibbutzim across the countryside run guesthouses, and some take long-term volunteers who work in exchange for food and lodging. Wineries and hot springs add to the list.

What lies beyond the armistice lines

Package tours sold as "Israel" often include places beyond its 1949 lines, and a report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations in March 2021 criticised European and North American operators for selling tours of the West Bank and the Golan Heights under that label. The West Bank has been under Israeli control since 1967. Israel's Nature and Parks Authority runs Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and Herodium, while Israeli citizens are generally restricted from travelling to the parts under the Palestinian Authority. Bethlehem received about 1.3 million tourists in 2008. Israeli and Palestinian tourism ministries work together on tourism in a joint committee.

The Golan Heights, taken from Syria in 1967, are regarded by the international community as Syrian territory under military occupation; Israel applied its law there in 1981, a step the Security Council declared null and void, and the United States recognised Israeli sovereignty in 2019. Visitors find bed and breakfasts, the Golan Trail of 125 kilometres, wineries and the ski resort on Mount Hermon. Old minefields remain, fenced and marked.

When to go and how to get around

The seasons are two: a cool, rainy winter from October to April and a dry, hot summer from May to September. The coast runs from about 16°C in January to 29°C in August, while Eilat and the Arava reach up to 46°C in August; Jerusalem, at about 750 metres, usually sees snow at least once a winter. The rainy season brings wild flowers to the hills. Sea breezes temper the summer on the coast, which is more humid than the interior, while the uplands of Upper Galilee have cool nights even in summer and occasional snow in winter. Mount Hermon keeps snow on its peaks through winter and spring, which is when its ski slope opens. Rain falls on about 60 days a year, and in the desert it can come as flash floods.

Ben Gurion Airport near Lod handled more than 21.1 million passengers in 2023 and is the main gateway, with Ramon and Haifa the other international airports. Roads carry more than rail, though rail passengers rose from 2.5 million in 1990 to 53 million in 2015. Buses run between all cities and towns, but much of the regular bus and rail service stops for the Sabbath, when the shared taxis called sheruts keep running. Traffic drives on the right, and Arabic appears on many signs alongside Hebrew.