Site climbs above Biblical Zoo and the Ramat Gan Safari Park to become the most visited pay-to-enter tourist site in 2010.
By OMER RABIN/GLOBESMasada cable car 311(photo credit: ariel Jerozolimski)
Masada climbed above the Biblical Zoo and the Ramat Gan Safari Park to become the most visited pay-to-enter tourist site in 2010, according to Dun & Bradstreet Israel. Precisely 762,992 people visited Masada last year, compared with 718,902 visitors at Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo, which fell to second place from 2009.Masada’s revenue rose 26% to NIS 34 million in 2010 from NIS 25.7 million in 2009.The third most visited pay-toenter tourist site was the Caesarea Antiquities National Park, with 698,808 visitors. The Hermon National Park (Banias) – one of the source of the Jordan River in the Golan – rose from ninth place in 2009 to fourth place in 2010 with 663,000 visitors.Visitors to the Ramat Gan Safari Park fell sharply, pushing it down from the second most-visited site to the fifth. The Ein Gedi Nature Reserve was in sixth place, with 468,562 visitors in 2010, 12% more than in 2009. It was followed by the Hamat Gader hot springs in the Yarmouk River valley, the Underwater Observatory in Eilat, the Qumran Caves by the Dead Sea, and the Yamit 2000 water park in Holon.Dun & Bradstreet Israel says that the aggregate revenue of Israel’s top ten pay-to-enter tourist sites rose 13% to NIS 143 million in 2010.
