| The world's second largest tourism fair, World Travel Market (WTM) 2008, was held in London for four days (10-13 November, 2008). The Israeli pavilion spread over an area of 500 square metres and had Tel Aviv's 100 year anniversary as its central theme.
The pavilion held a ‘Happy Hour' each day in which holidays to Israel were raffled off. The pavilion included a booth for Dead Sea mud and healing treatments where visitors could enjoy massages and treatments. A street theatre held activities throughout the days of the fair on themes pertaining to Israel, including ‘the kibbutz', Eilat, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and more. In addition, there were special activities each day including a guest performance by psychic Uri Geller, and footballer Ben Sahar holding contests between visitors to the pavilion. It also seems that my remark about a ‘Guinness Book of World Records sized hummus dish' was more apt than I realised, as indeed the humongous hummus dish served to guests at the Israeli pavilion, along with innumerable pitas to sop it up with, is being submitted for a world record.
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Besides representatives of the Ministry of Tourism, the marketing efforts were joined by some 50 Israeli commercial entities including hotel chains, airlines, incoming tourism organizers, business entrepreneurs, and several representatives from Eilat, primarily hoteliers and marketing people, participated in the fair and presented the hotels and attractions in Eilat.
The Minister of Tourism, Ruhama Avraham-Belila, said that "the world financial crisis forces us to be creative in every marketing activity. All of the tourist sites in the ‘global village' are competing for the smaller number of tourists who can now afford to allow themselves holiday in the upcoming months, and we must be smart enough to market them the beauty and uniqueness of Israel that they do not know from the news services. Since the beginning of the year over 140,000 tourists have come to Israel from England, a rise of 13% from the same period last year. But these figures do not give an indication of what can be anticipating in the coming months in view of the world economic collapse. The London fair and the numerous efforts we are investing in are designed to give a proper solution to the anticipated decrease in demand from Europe in general and England in particular."
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