In a first, Israel could roll out e-visa programme for Indians by year-end; country aims to attract 70K tourists by 2025

Indian travellers will be the first in the world to be eligible for an e-visa programme for Israel that could kick start later this year, Amruta Bangera, director of marketing at Israel Ministry of Tourism, India, told ET. Currently, Israel doesn't offer e-visas to any country.

Bangera said Israel is back to attracting tourists and is aiming to get 70,000 tourists from India by 2025, and one lakh tourists from India by 2026. Up until the end of September last year, Israel received about 41,800 Indian visitors in 2023. In 2019 Israel received 65,100 tourists from India.

“To attract more tourists and make it easier for them, we are planning to come up with an e visa programme. It’s still in a nascent stage, but by the end of the year, we should have a pilot running for e visas for Indians,” said Bangera.

“India is the first country we are doing e visas for, as Israel believes strongly in the potential of the Indian market. We see huge potential. Because we have so many outbound tourists from India, we would want to target them,” she added.

Bangera said talks are also on with IndiGo and Air India to boost flight capacity and that the travel companies are also being reached out to for signing agreements for marketing and collaborations.

“We are trying to do everything possible to ensure people that it is safe to travel to Israel. Even the airlines have begun operations. Air India started with three flights. Now they have added a fourth flight,” she said.

“They are planning to do a daily flight to Israel and I am told they are also contemplating whether to operate a few from Mumbai or just continue from Delhi. I’ve been informed that they would come up with details by the end of the third quarter. We are also planning a digital campaign for India besides participating in seminars and roadshows and signing agreements with travel agents,” she added.

From January to June this year, 5,700 tourists from India visited Israel. Overall, Israel received around 4,95,300 lakh tourists globally during the same period. Its biggest source markets are the US and Europe.

“Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kochi and Hyderabad are our biggest markets in India, but we are trying to promote Israel in tier two, tier three markets as well. 50% of the tourists who visited Israel this year were from South India. Pilgrimage constitutes about 48% of the overall visitor mix from India to Israel, while leisure, MICE and others would be around 30%, 12% and 10% respectively,” said Bangera.

Pini Shani, Israel Tourism's deputy DG and head of marketing administration stated in May this year that the Ben Gurion airport is fully operational and most of the cities such as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Dead Sea and Galilee are entirely active day and night. He also assured that the safety of tourists is the ministry's 'top priority' and that it is 'careful' about the security of citizens and tourists alike.