That’s an impressive 25 percent increase over the previous year. According to the Ministry of Tourism, those visitors spent 20 billion shekels (about 5.8 billion dollars). This led directly to a lot of new jobs, as hotels across the country had to increase staff by 8 percent
Most visitors came from the USA. Over 700,000 tourists arrived from there, an increase of 21 percent over 2016. In second place was Russia with 307,000 tourists, a strong 26 percent increase over the previous year. In third place was France and in fourth was Germany with roughly 202,000 visitors from each. Other nations sending significant numbers of tourists to Israel included Ukraine, China, Italy and Poland.
Another interesting fact is that 59 percent of the visitors to come last year said it was their first time in Israel....
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