Those Were The Days
There's a particular kind of melancholy in old trade show photographs. The booths are bright, the crowds are optimistic, and nobody in the frame has any idea what's coming. These images from the iMTM — Israel's Mediterranean Tourism Market — were shot in 2013, when the country was a fixture on the global travel circuit and the industry that served it was thriving.
The floor buzz. In the first frame, a sailor-costumed brand ambassador distributes brochures near the Expedia–Hotels.com–Venere joint stand, while a showgirl in blue sequins and a captain in dress whites work the crowd. It's the kind of theatrical activation that defined mid-2010s travel expos: part hospitality showcase, part performance. The blue carpet underfoot, the B1–B4 hall markers overhead — this is the Tel Aviv Convention Center at full professional hum.
A different angle, same energy. Shot with a warmer, more cinematic grade, the second image catches the same Expedia stand from across the aisle. A woman in a wide-brimmed garden hat and long coat converses with the white-uniformed captain. The giant illuminated letter sculpture behind them belongs to another exhibitor entirely, but it frames the scene like a stage set. A chandelier glints in the upper right. The atmosphere is leisurely and convivial — the atmosphere of an industry that believed in itself.
The booth in detail. Two cleaner, more clinical shots give us the full Expedia presence: the upper banner carrying Expedia, Hotels.com, and Venere side by side; the entrance arch branded simply Expedia; the rollup stand listing the group's full portfolio — Lodging Partner Services, Hotwire, Egencia, eLong, Local Experts, the Affiliate Network. The iMTM 2013 branding flanks the entrance on both sides. The crowd inside is dense, engaged, professionally dressed. These are buyers, sellers, and operators — the working machinery of inbound tourism.
The partner wall. The clearest shot of the Expedia rollup stand reads like a snapshot of online travel circa 2013: a world before consolidation fully ran its course, when the group still maintained distinct consumer brands across segments and geographies. Venere, eLong, and Local Experts are all long gone now. Hotels.com survives as a brand but operates invisibly inside the Expedia engine. The logos on that banner are a minor archaeology of an industry that has since been compressed and restructured past recognition.
What the photographs don't show is the broader context they were made in: a period when Israel reliably attracted three to four million international visitors annually, when Tel Aviv's boutique hotel scene was expanding aggressively, when the country had a compelling story to tell about food, culture, heritage, and nightlife that the global travel press was increasingly willing to amplify.
That story didn't disappear. But the audience for it contracted sharply — first with the regional instability of the mid-2010s, then with COVID's total erasure of international movement, then with the renewed conflict that began in October 2023 and remade the calculus of visiting the region entirely.
The people in these photographs are doing what travel industry professionals do at every trade show in every city: networking, pitching, collecting cards, wearing optimistic costumes. They are not thinking about what comes next. That's not a criticism. That's just what the present tense looks like before it becomes the past.
Israel will likely be a tourism destination again, in some form, at some point. The infrastructure is there. The attractions are there. The professionals who built careers around it are still there, waiting. What's missing for now is the uncomplicated enthusiasm visible in every frame of these 2013 photographs — the sense that showing up, putting on a sailor hat, and handing out brochures was enough to make something happen.
It was, once.
Israel Incoming Tourism: From Peak to Structural Bottom
Step back and the pattern almost draws itself—three successive shocks, each one deeper than the last, layering damage rather than replacing it. First COVID, then the October 7 war and its aftermath with Hamas and Hezbollah, and now the added dimension of direct tension with Iran. Not a cycle. More like a reset.
Going into 2023, Israel’s tourism sector was actually in good shape. Roughly 3 million visitors, strong momentum, and a sense that the country was on track to fully surpass pre-pandemic highs. Hotels were filling, airlines expanding routes, the usual optimism you see when an industry feels like it has survived the worst.
Then the war hit, and the floor gave way.
By 2024, incoming tourism had collapsed to under one million visitors. That’s not just a decline—it’s a structural break. You’re looking at a drop of more than two-thirds in volume, and a similar contraction in revenue. Entire segments of the industry—tour operators, guides, small hotels—basically stalled overnight. The ecosystem didn’t shrink gracefully; it froze.
What makes this phase different from COVID is the nature of risk perception. During the pandemic, travel stopped everywhere. The constraint was external and temporary. Once borders reopened, demand returned because the underlying “desire to visit” hadn’t been damaged.
Now the question is different. It’s not “can I travel?” but “should I go there at all?”
That shift is subtle but decisive.
In 2025, there’s a rebound—but it’s uneven and clearly incomplete. Visitor numbers recover to somewhere around 1.2–1.4 million. That sounds like growth, and technically it is, but the baseline matters. It’s still far below what the industry considers normal. And the composition of visitors has changed. You’re not seeing broad-based tourism returning. Instead, it’s:
Diaspora travel—people with personal ties
Religious and pilgrimage segments—more resilient by nature
Selective long-haul markets where risk tolerance is higher
Religious and pilgrimage segments—more resilient by nature
Selective long-haul markets where risk tolerance is higher
What’s missing is mainstream discretionary tourism—the kind that fills hotels at scale and drives margins.
Then comes the Iran layer, and this is where things get more complicated. The risk perception stops being local and becomes regional. Airspace disruptions, missile exchanges, sudden flight cancellations—these don’t just reduce demand, they disrupt the logistics of tourism itself. Even people willing to visit start hesitating if they’re not sure they can leave easily.
That uncertainty matters more than actual events, in a way. Tourism runs on predictability.
So what you get is a prolonged bottoming process rather than a clean recovery. If you map it mentally, it looks like a step-down followed by a flat, uneven stretch:
COVID: sharp drop, but reversible
Post-COVID rebound: fast recovery
War shock: structural break
Regional escalation: extended stagnation
Post-COVID rebound: fast recovery
War shock: structural break
Regional escalation: extended stagnation
There are early signs of movement upward again—slow increases in arrivals, cautious reopening of routes—but the tone across the industry is consistent: recovery will be gradual, not explosive.
The deeper issue is perception lag. Even if conditions stabilize on the ground, it takes time for global travelers to update their mental map. Safety isn’t measured in days or weeks; it’s measured in sustained calm.
So yes, 2024 was likely the numerical bottom. The lowest point in raw visitor numbers.
But the psychological bottom—the point where travelers collectively feel “it’s fine to go again”—that’s still forming. And until that shifts, the recovery stays partial, fragile, and uneven, almost like the industry is testing the water one cautious step at a time.