Israel Active

303,000 tourists entered Israel in June 2017, 28% more than in June 2016. Jan to June saw a 26% increase in visitors, to an all-time-record of 1.74 million. Estimated revenue from incoming tourism in this period was NIS 9.4 billion. Tourism from the USA (the largest in total) increased by 20%

Israeli Eugene Romanovsky went to great lengths to sell his 1996 Suzuki Vitara by making an elaborate video using visual effects that has generated millions of views. With dramatic music, the car appears to out-run dinosaurs, races a cheetah, escapes an avalanche and drives to a desert mountaintop.

New York based ticketing platform company SeatGeek has bought Israeli ticketing software company TopTix for $56 million. TopTix will power SeatGeek Open – a radically new approach, in which artists sell tickets through popular ecommerce websites, travel tools, and messaging sites.

Tubi 60 is an Israeli-made alcoholic drink with a secret mix of some 60 natural herbs and fruit essences. Developed and distilled by Hilal and Yanai Tubi, the vegan herbal spirit is available at most Jerusalem bars and clubs. It will soon also be found on liquor shelves in Texas, Brooklyn, Oslo and Berlin.

I reported previously that Israeli oil company Delek had taken a 19.7% stake in Canadian-UK oil exploration company Ithaca which is active in the UK’s North Sea waters.  Delek has now taken-over control of Ithaca for around 470 million Canadian dollars.

In the Israeli tech industry, workers are in greater demand than supply as the 112 recruiting companies confirmed at the employment fair held at the private university IDC Herzliya. Also, many youngsters want the challenge of starting their own company rather than joining an existing one.  

EasyJet are launching regular flights from Tel Aviv to Venice and to Naples. There are three flights a week to Venice, starting 31 Oct and two flights a week to Naples, starting 4 Nov. These routes bring to eleven the number of easyJet’s scheduled services to Europe from Tel Aviv.

The readers of Travel + Leisure magazine voted Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport as the 8th best airport in the world. Rankings were based on travelers' experiences of access, check-in, security, food, shopping and design.

Israel’s Mazor Robotics has received sixteen purchase orders for its Mazor X system from customers in the U.S. It expects to report record revenues for the second quarter of 2017.

Israel’s first 100% vegan supermarket HaGal HaYarok has opened in Tel Aviv’s Shuk HaCarmel. Besides well-known vegan brands, it stocks baked goods of all kinds, plus hard-to-find and exotic ingredients. It also sells its own HaGal HaYarok private label products.