An interview with Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum

The tourists who left Israel in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have not been replaced by new visitors. More than two months have passed without any tourists landing here, first because Israel has sealed it’s airports to any non-Israeli visitors, but primarily because the pandemic has stopped everything, including tourism.

For a city like Jerusalem, whose economy is largely based on tourism, this is a terrible blow. According to figures of the municipality and backed by the tourism administration at the Jerusalem Development Authority, nearly 10 million tourists visited the city in the two past years, including both Israelis and foreigners. 

At Safra Square, Mayor Moshe Lion and other officials are aware that this is their most urgent mission. Meanwhile, hundreds of volunteers keep packing food baskets, dispatching them to seniors and families with special needs. They all understand that tourism is essential to Jerusalem. 

Lion has created a task force to save the situation, with Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum at its head. In Jerusalem sat down with the deputy mayor to discuss the situation.

I believe that we have to get prepared for the day after, and we’re quickly approaching it.

Jerusalem has faced many challenges in the last decades, like wars and intifadas, but the coronavirus has been particularly challenging because our economy is heavily based on the tourism industry. In Jerusalem, this industry directly employs about 15,000 people, and tens of thousands indirectly. 

So I asked Mayor Lion to set up a municipal committee for tourism, but it is not just a question of helping. The goal is the complete resuscitation, the rehabilitation of tourism in the city. For that, we have to work with the government, with the JDA, with the hotel association, with small businesses, with the tour guides, with all those involved, in order to figure out how we can rethink the way that we are doing tourism, and to bring more domestic tourism, until flights are back and tourists from abroad are back, which might take another year.

Yes. The first stage – Israelis first – might take anything between three to six months. I think that a lot of people understand by now that they’re not going to travel abroad this summer. So our goal is how to make Israelis say to themselves ‘OK, we’re not going to Prague, but hey, we can have a weekend in Jerusalem, and it’s going to be amazing and it’s going to be affordable and it’s going to be really interesting.’

Yes, this is what we should do, and we should have done that a long time ago.

Everybody is going to have to compromise a little bit. Everyone will have to cut a bit in the margins.

Oh no, I want to create packages. For example we’ll have three-night stays in a Jerusalem hotel with three tourist sights, like museums, botanical gardens, and the zoo. We’ll have family packages, couples packages, and other customer packages so that people will say, ‘OK, we’re not going abroad, but we’ll spend a few thousands shekels in Jerusalem for a few days. It’s not crazy. I believe it’s feasible.

If the big hotels won’t, I know that the small ones will. The boutique hotels are desperate. They will join. I think it will create competition and eventually bring down prices.

One problem is that Israelis don’t have money now, and the other problem is that everything is expensive. So my aim is to make Jerusalem attractive and affordable for this specific situation. 

Many Israelis have less money. We can’t solve this problem. But some of them will go back to work soon, and there are also many others who still have the means for such a program, like people in the hi-tech industry, which hasn’t been so much affected. 

We have the entire public sector. They have continued more or less in the way they were before. We even have industries that have actually grown: the delivery and food industries, so there are still a lot of Israelis who have enough money, and instead of traveling to America for two weeks, they can afford Jerusalem for one week.

 Hotels will have to work more “boutique,” less crowded, fewer people in dining rooms. We will have to limit the amount of people at sights. We will have to create a safe space for the city and for all the historical sites in the city. I believe we can do it. 

I consulted with several mayors of historical cities in the world. For instance I spoke with the mayor of Cordoba, Spain, a city about the size of Jerusalem. He says he is working on domestic tourism, and we are trying to share his best practices to see how we can enhance the domestic market. 

I am not too worried in the long term. I am optimistic that tourism to Jerusalem is unlikely to be damaged permanently. However, we don’t know what will happen in the short term. Will social distancing become part of the new normal? What will tourism look like in this new reality? 

I believe that we need a paradigm shift in our thinking, even for the immediate future. Over the last few weeks, some have seen this crisis as an opportunity to rethink or reset the norm, to revisit the cramped, low-cost airlines and the cacophony of the all-you-can-eat buffets, with hundreds of people wrestling in lines for the eggs at breakfast or the entrecote at dinner. Perhaps the way to repair the industry in what feels like an apocalypse is to develop and embrace the boutique experience.

We are in the process of building a practical plan that will get us back to a version of tourism that can live with this new reality in the short term, and the full restoration of the industry within 18 months. In addition, I plan to establish a municipal fund for loans and grants to small tourism businesses to get them through the slump, and also to incentivize online businesses to hire or retrain people as much as possible wherever possible. I propose a series of practical steps, which will be evaluated in real time, as a road map to rehabilitation as follows:

The immediate opening of open spaces, with restrictions on the number of visitors, like the Botanical Gardens, the Gazelle Valley, the Biblical Zoo, open malls and markets.

Then opening of national sites and museums in closed areas that will be limited to a specific number of people or family units, for example: the Israel Museum, the Science Museum, the Tower of David, Bible Lands Museum and more. The opening of additional sites will be examined in accordance with compliance to hygiene rules.

I want to open hotels and hostels while adhering to a safe hygiene standard issued by the municipality. In the first stage, tourists will be allowed to take Airbnbs or places where there are utilities and kitchenettes in each room. Likewise, hotel accommodation will be permitted with the option of in-room dining only, without using public areas. Eventually, we will permit use of hotels with smaller dining areas while maintaining social distancing, or an appointment system for guests to dine.

Our goal is to bring domestic tourism from its present 20% up to 40%, and encourage one-day tourism packages for individuals and nuclear families. One of Jerusalem’s unique selling points is our holy sites. As soon as the crisis ends, we envision a surge in the visits to holy sites. 

We need a thoughtful plan specifically for the Holy Basin: the Temple Mount, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall, including the surrounding areas. We will need to limit the number of people, test their temperature and ensure that masks and hand sanitizers are used. 

A local entrepreneur came up with an idea of stamping hands of tourists once their temperature is taken as a “clean pass” for all sites. We will pay special attention to the tour guides who have taken a huge hit. A marketing campaign to encourage guided tours for families celebrating birthdays and marriages would be an effective way to get them working again. 

Another example is free parking for tourists around the Old City, one ticket for a number of sites and other ways of making it easier and more affordable for Israelis to choose Jerusalem. In summary, it is our duty to examine all options to save the tourism industry from closure and collapse following the crisis. 

There are things in this crisis that we can change now. Tourism to Jerusalem needs more coordination and this is what we’re doing with my plan. We need to map the next two years and understand what foreign and domestic tourists need in order to feel safe. The industry must also understand that it may have to compromise on profit margins in order to breathe life into their industry in the short term. We are all in this together. Sacrifices need to be made by all sectors. The colossal task ahead is restoring the confidence of the public.

Jerusalem has a new deputy mayor, and Ofer Berkovitch says it means there is nothing to talk about anymore regarding his Hitorerut Party joining the coalition.

I think he’s right. There is nothing to talk about anymore. I think Berkovitch and Hitorerut have only themselves to blame. They played dirty tricks that brought Moshe Lion to say that he doesn’t need them.

I think that myself and city council members Laura Wharton and Yossi Havilio work very hard to represent the pluralistic public.