The tourist flow from Russia to Israel increased by 35% in January-March

“In the first quarter of 2017, Israel was visited by 70.5 thousand Russian tourists, which is 35% more than in the same period of the last year. In January 2017, the tourist flow from Russia increased by 23% against the same period of 2016, in February - by 54%, in March by 32%”, - reported the Ministry of Tourism of Israel. The report also says that at this moment the frequency of flights between Russian cities and Tel Aviv (Ben Gurion airport) is 71 flights a week. There are 56 flights a week from the Moscow region: El Al airline (18 flights), Aeroflot (36 flights) and Ural Airlines (2 flights from Zhukovsky airport). In addition, the Ural Airlines performs one flight per week from Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar and Samara, and two flights a week from Sochi. Rossia airline offers a weekly flight from Rostov-on-Don. It is planned to increase the frequency of regular flights to 74 flights a week since June 14, 2017. "The beginning of 2017 was very dynamic for us, and the results did not wait: an increasing number of Russian tourists prefer to travel to Israel. And so we are actively promoting the increasing of number of flights between our countries and expanding the geography of flights", - said the Head of the Russian department of the Ministry of Tourism of Israel Ksenia Kobyakova. In 2016 the Russian tourist flow to Israel amounted 266 thousand people.