| In a personal interview we held with Ronnie Yoffe, we were exposed to the views of a man who loves the city of Eilat, happily making his living and his life here. In his words, working in the local media is a hobby that combines a mission and a goal.
Ronnie, who was a colonel in the military, established Israir in 1996 as a domestic airline, a small company which quickly grew to become one of the three leading airlines in Israel. Ronnie has been managing the Israir branch in Eilat for many years with great esteem.
In that same year, a year after establishment of the local radio station, the Voice of the Red Sea 102 FM, Ronnie began broadcasting a personal weekly programme called ‘Yoffe Shel Shavua' in which he gave air to his opinions and succeeded in waking up some of the sleepy Eilatis. (The name was a play on words between ‘a great week' and ‘a Yoffe week'). Later on, the programme switched from midnight to Friday afternoons. Over a year ago, it because a daily current affairs programme which enjoys great popularity.
In the wake of his original radio programme, Ronnie was invited to write a column by one of the local weeklies. In his written column he gives free rein to his opinions in a variety of areas, national politics at the top of them. Ronnie Yoffe does not hide his liberal views from a local public that mostly holds a conservative stance.
While Ronnie is in contact with many politicians and ministers, his interest and his media approach is always Eilat-oriented due to the unique situation Eilat is in: its geographical distance and isolation from the main part of Israel, the resultant closed economy, its economic ‘eggs' being all in the sole ‘basket' of tourism, and more. National views or policy in matters such as transportation, housing, and more are directed to how they affect Eilat specifically, since that is usually quite different than how the rest of the country might be affected.
Ronnie is one of those blessed with the opportunity to work at something he loves. Radio or media is his hobby, not his livelihood. Radio gives him satisfaction because he sees it as a means to influence people, make them think and ask questions, get outside their own box of thought, broaden their horizons. He sees it as a means to teach and to be a watchdog of democracy, but he tries to be objective. His motto is "You don't have to agree with a single word I say, but do listen and understand what I'm saying."
When asked what can be done to improve tourism in Eilat, Ronnie raised several issues.
"Eilat is a city with hotels, not a tourist city", he pointed out. "It doesn't know how to behave as a tourist city. Most of the residents are people without education or training in tourism." Indeed, taxi drivers in London don't just know how to drive and maintain a vehicle, for example. They have to take a one-year course in which they learn all the street addresses and the tourist sites to point out to their passengers.
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Ronnie disapproves of the sharp division between the hotel area and the rest of the city resulting from permit policy that permitted the hotels to keep tourists within their domain, providing everything they need right in the hotel so that they won't want or need to go outside it and into the town.
Ronnie also points out that the Municipality did not manage to move from ‘downtown' and give the city proper any tourism character. He mentions that Cyprus, for example, 15 years ago declared it would be a ‘tourism nature reserve', and the whole island was turned into a tourist resort, not just a segregated part of it.
"If the government of Israel calls Eilat ‘tourist resort number 1', it must have content, not just hotels. We must be at least as smart as our neighbours and do what Mubarak and Abdullah do - have international conferences in a resort town [Eilat], where people loosen up and enjoy themselves at the same time, rather than in the big cities. Make Eilat a venue where things actively happen to draw people to the town and not just sun and sea."
Ronnie feels there needs to be more policy and less corruption involved to give Eilat a greater tourist potential. He is pleased, however, that at least the current municipal administration seems to have an eye toward giving the city more content and looking toward the future, as evidenced by things like physical beautification or the encouragement of institutions such as the Ben Gurion University campus.
Ronnie closes this subject by reiterating that the local media must focus on Eilati issues and needs, not just be another national channel like the existing ones. Regarding current affairs as well, he stresses the importance of directing their content and the aspects of them toward the target audience, the Eilatis. If a minister talks about policy, Ronnie asks him how it relates to or affects Eilat.
Eilat Today asked Ronnie what his dreams are for the city of Eilat. He would like to see it bustling with tourism, become a major centre for conferences and congresses, have a casino, be an international city, become a proper and complete Free Trade Zone like the Seychelles or the Caiman Islands, and to be a place people actively seek to come and live in.
Asked what he thinks he will be doing ten years from now, his reply was concise: "Playing with my grandchildren."
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