Set your own rate, says Jerusalem hotel
news.bbc.co.uk
The Gold's empty lobby: A sign of the times?
One of Jerusalem's newest hotels has a new wheeze to try to attract guests.
Check in to the Jerusalem Gold, stay as long as you like - and then decide how much you want to pay.
The special deal extends only to 10 of the hotel's 200 rooms, and is valid - on a bed-and-breakfast basis - until the end of November.
But it is an indication of just how desperate things are for the Israeli tourism industry, mired in a drastic downturn thanks to two years of violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
Desperate times
Unsurprisingly, no-one else has tried the tactic out, staff at the Jerusalem Gold told BBC News Online.
But at the moment only 20-30% of the rooms in the two-year-old, 60m shekel ($12.4m; £8m) hotel are occupied during the week - rising to half the rooms on a good weekend.
Desperate times, a spokesman told BBC News Online, demanded desperate measures.
"There's just no business at the moment at all," he said. "So we're trying to make deals, come up with packages that might move the market."
In 2001, 1.2 million tourists visited Israel, down 54% from the year before and translating into a $1.7bn loss of tourism receipts.
Two dozen restaurants and at least four hotels have closed in Jerusalem alone since the fighting started in October 2000.
And even the banking sector is suffering the after-effects, according to Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
In July, the paper reported that banks may have to set aside a "large" if unspecified sum to cover "doubtful" debts incurred by the country's hotel chains of up to 2.5bn shekels. |
