The Union of Hotel Owners of Thessaloniki came back from Tel Aviv, Israel after a series of promising meetings in the International Tourism Exhibition IMTM that took place between February 7th and 8th.
The participants’ interest for Thessaloniki was big and increased compared with last year’s exhibition. What helped a lot was that two important announcements on the air transportation sector coincided.
Aegean Airlines announced that as of May 29th 2017 until October 15th 2017 a pilot program of airline connection between Thessaloniki and Tel Aviv, three times per week. Also the second bigger Israeli airline company, Arkia Airlines Ltd. As of June this year will start direct flights connecting the two cities one to two times per week. This will go on until October with the option of expanding the program for the winter months as well.
Many journalists from sites, magazines and newspapers are interested for the travel issues about it, such as the Israeli edition of National Geographic that will visit Thessaloniki with the press trip that Union will soon organize.
Thessaloniki is close to the hearts of the Israelis due to the history of the city, the Jewish presence there years ago as well as the bond between the two nations. They are mostly interested for city break tourism, with family packages as well as active tourism especially close to the city, like Mount Olympus and Meteora.