Top Israel NTO Executive justifies office closure.

In a telephone interview with The Mole on Monday evening, Mr Rami Levi, the Israel National Tourist Office senior executive charged with running Israel’s overseas tourism offices, advised The Mole that the closure of their office in Sydney was not pulling out of Australia but actually regrouping.

He revealed that his organisation had commissioned Ernst & Young to undertake a full international review of all overseas offices and the closure of the office in Sydney was partly as a result of that, but also because the Australian visitor figures were too small to justify the expenditure at this time, albeit very small.

He added that the investment in Australia, rumoured to be only $A150,000 per annum, was too small to do anything meaningful and therefore currently not worth doing.

Mr Levi said, “I do not see it as a pull out, but I see it as part of our reorganisation.”  “The work with Ernst & Young involves a major global reorganisation and while I see Australia as a very important market, as a result of budget constraints we are now concentrating on other markets which are closer to Israel and give a better return on investment.

Mr Levi added, “This closure does not mean that when the review is over we will not re-open in Australia.”   “At the moment the concentration of our efforts on markets provides much larger volumes, for example 600,000 currently from N America and an estimated 750,000 this year and Europe where we are aiming at 500,000 this year.

Mr Levi also said, “After the regrouping if we recommence an operation in Australia, we will do so in a major way, because in the past we have simply not spent enough budget and funds in Australia – if we come back, we will come back with a much stronger effort and budgets, but we will need much stronger visitor figures though”.

Mr Levi asked The Mole to stress that this decision was not about a person, but about a strategy.  He added, ”David Beirman has done an excellent job with limited funds and we are extremely grateful for all his efforts, but the review will enable us to decide if we spend our funds in Australia”.  “We are going to appoint a person in Israel to be responsible for Australia and a visit to Australia will take place shortly to meet with the trade and key partners”.

Globally Israel spends $25m (believed to be US$) on overseas marketing, which puts the $150,000 spent in Australia in perspective and according to Mr Levi not enough money to get sufficient incremental revenue.

Report by The Mole