Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my marbles, I know it’s Judea and Samaria but I can’t pass up using the other side’s malicious terms purely as title click bait sometimes.
From the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) comes this press release about hotels in the PA administered parts of Judea Samaria in 2014. And business is up!
- More than 0.6 million guests spent more than 1.5 million nights;
- During 2014, 610,347 guests stayed in hotels in the West Bank;
- 32% were from European Union countries and 9% were Palestinian, 10% were from the United States and Canada.
- The number of hotel guests was 2% higher than in the previous year.
Wow! I wonder how that compares to Syria, or Libya or even Egypt. You can see the full press release here. Unfortunately we have no confirmation of figures from Gaza as yet though of course we have plenty of pictures of the many hotels in concentration camp Gaza which the foreign press like to stay in.
Despite the fact that the room occupation rates did grow a little in 2014, they’re pretty bad at only 25%. For comparison Israeli hotels run at around 60% which is more normal for the rest of the world too. But let’s face it, unless you’ve got a thing for attending weekly stone throwing exhibitions or their tremendous theatre shows, or a desperate desire to attend the grave of Arafat, arch terrorist of the Palestinian cause, they haven’t spent a lot of time building a great deal of tourist attractions over there. Most visitors to Bethlehem or Jericho are day trippers staying (happily) in Israeli hotels.
