The Tourism Ministry, via the recently-established Religious Affairs Desk, has launched a new Christian YouTube channel, designed to arouse interest amongst Christians around the world, challenge them to visit Israel and increase Christian tourism traffic to Israel.During the running-in period in the last few months, thousands of hits were registered on the channel, this even before the channel’s promotion.

The channel, which  includes short videos in a range of languages including, among others, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian and Polish, features short testimonials from pastors, religious leaders and tourists speaking about the spiritual experience of their visit to the Holy Land as well as information on religious sites and events.

The creation and promotion of the website is part of the ministry’s NIS 60 million marketing efforts in 2011 aimed at the Christian markets (with a similar budget allocated for 2012.) These activities include, among others, dozens of seminars and dedicated meetings with tour operators and decision makers (pastors and religious leaders) and massive targeted advertising activities in the Christian media etc. The ministry’s Catholic channel ( Holyland Pilgrimage) has already registered over 750,000 views. New content has been uploaded in recent months, alongside competitions on the Facebook page to encourage user-generated content.

Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov: “We are looking forward to the future of advertising and marketing and are using tools and the knowledge we have accumulated in order to maximize the vast tourism potential associated with Israel. Incoming Christian tourism, in all its denominations, represents the main target market in which the Tourism Ministry focuses its marketing effort in order to increase incoming tourism. This new website will help transmit messages and the special spiritual significance of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.”  Article by goisrael.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/HolyLandVisit?blend=22&ob=5

http://www.youtube.com/user/HolylandPilgrimage?ob=5