MUMBAI: Visa requirements to travel to Israel are likely to be eased thisyear, an official from the Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT) has said.
Introduction of express visa services through VFS and relaxing some visarequirements for Indians who have completed travel to any Schengencountries, US, Canada, Australia and Israel are on cards, the officialsfrom the ministry indicated.
IMOT released statistics regarding tourists travelling to Israel here onMonday. It has shown a phenomenal increase in a number of Indianstravelling to Israel in the year 2017.
On the backdrop of the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu an increased interest of Indians wanting to travel to Israel hasbeen observed and to facilitate that the visa conditions are likely to berelaxed, the officials added.
“2017 was outstanding year for Israel tourism in India. By October 2017, wealready saw 49,000 Indians arrive in Israel, breaking previous records, andthe year closed with 60,000 travelers to Israel from India,” said HassanMadah, Director of Israel Ministry of Tourism India & Philippines, as hereleased the statistics.
“With over 20 million outbound tourists a year, India has been an importantmarket for us and we have witnessed constant growth in the arrivals fromthe Indian market over the last 4 years,” he added and hoped that thefigures will touch 1 lakh in 2018 owing to initiatives like easing of thevisa process and airlines connectivity.
Israel’s national airline El Al recently announced to increase its directflight frequency between India and Israel. Air India and Arkia too haveexpressed interest to begin operations soon and introduce direct flightsbetween Israel and India, he added.
During his recent Mumbai visit, Netanyahu had extended an open invitationto Indian filmmakers to shoot in the beautiful locale of Israel. Relaxingof visa requirements is being seen as the next step in that direction.