Cultured Capital
Stuart Winer, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 9, 2005
When tourists think about Jerusalem, they think about history and religion.
As they are whisked from one site to another, most visitors from abroad miss the unique cultural experience of the 3000-year-old city.
Yes, culture. With its many diverse and even contradictory ethnic groups and traditions, where the three great monotheistic religious converge, Jerusalem has a unique culture that could compete on an international level and offer tourists something different to take home as a memory.
But first, tourism and cultural entrepreneurs would have to coordinate among themselves and Jerusalemites would have to change their mind-set about their city.
Startup Jerusalem, a non-profit organization under the auspices of businessman and city councilman Nir Barkat, is convinced that Jerusalem's unique cultural advantages can be successfully marketed, and he intends to do so.
According to Startup Jerusalem chief executive officer Eli Kazhdan, the lack of communication and harmony between the city's tourist life and its cultural life is the major problem facing the tourism industry in Jerusalem today. Tour operators think that Jerusalem is dull, so they do not look beyond the predictable, big-name tourist attractions.
Even special events for tour groups usually stick to the familiar, well-tried pattern. "Yad Vashem and the Western Wall, a meeting with a journalist, an army general or an MK. And that is it," Kazhdan says.
With nothing to hold their attention, the tourists quickly move on to other parts of the country. According to Kazhdan's figures, over the past decade, Jerusalem has lost a night in the average time tourists spend in the capital, which is now down to three days. A day less in Jerusalem is a day less work for hotel staff and tour guides and less time to spend money in shops and taxis, totaling an estimated loss of 3,200 jobs. And the tourists lose too, since, as Kazhdan notes, "They miss out on the wealth of culture in Jerusalem. Tourists with time to kill are often at a loss as to what to do. In other Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Eilat, hotel lobbies display abundant up-to-date information to guests of what is on, and where. In Jerusalem, what little information there is available goes no further than the opening hours of standard tourist sites.
"Jerusalem is not Eilat or Tel Aviv and will never be and we are not trying to create that," says Ilanit Melchior, culture and tourism cluster manager for Startup Jerusalem.
But there's still a lot that can be done to change the situation.
As its first step, Startup Jerusalem is now trying to open channels of communication and information resources that will enable tour operators and cultural institutes to interconnect.
"We wanted to find ways for Jerusalem to leverage tourism, to become a destination for people around the world," says Melchior.
Last April, Startup Jerusalem brought together a wide range of tour operators, cultural and tourist site operators, artists and performers. During the full-day conference, the participants split off into work groups to brainstorm about what they could offer each other.
"We took the people who are the players in the field and brought them together with the tour operators," Kazhdan says. "People didn't come for a schmooze session; they saw it a business opportunity".
"It is all about seeing how to get a win-win situation," Melchior says. "If people cooperate then both sides will get more clients."
In addition to fertile contact between the participants the conference has already led to a project to set up a Web site to provide all the information that tourism and cultural entrepreneurs need to plan their trip in Jerusalem.
"And maybe stay that extra night," Kazhdan adds hopefully.
Although the Jerusalem Municipality already has an extensive Web site about the capital, Melchior says that is not enough and that tourists tend to stay away from municipal sites that are burdened with providing information for their local residents as well.
"We are looking for something much more proactive to combine tourism and culture," she says.
The planned Web site, which will cost some $150,000 to develop, will carry information such as which groups are due to arrive and how many participants they will bring. Available artists and performers will then be able to offer their services in advance of the groups arriving.
"With organized groups you know in advance what is coming so you can close a deal with the tour operators in advance," Melchior says.
Next, Israeli officials in general, and Jerusalem officials in particular, have to change their attitudes towards tourism. For a long time Jerusalem could rely on its big-name tourist assets, but Melchior says that when tourism trends changed the city didn't keep up.
"Today when there are so many other destinations around the world you have to be much more creative and customer orientated," she says.
The bulk of those who come to the capital are organized tour groups, Jewish and Christian solidarity missions, or even family, all of whom come for specific motives and not simple tourism.
"We don't have tourists, we have visitors," Melchior says. "While the 'visitors' are good in terms of numbers and the cash that they bring with them, the tourism industry has slipped into an apathetic attitude that assumes the groups will come because they have the motivation to visit the Holy Land.
The majority of tourists coming to Israel visit Jerusalem, which is home to country's busiest tourist site, Yad Vashem.
So if the tourists are already in the city, then all we need to do is keep them here, Melchior says. "Let's give them the possibility to spend as much money as possible here by staying longer."
With over 80 percent of tourist itineraries booked before the travelers ever leave home, Jerusalem needs to reach out and fill the small holes that are left in the busy schedules.
Individual tourists are a different breed and must be enticed to visit locations. "If someone wakes up in Chicago and says to his wife 'let's go on holiday,' I want them to say 'Jerusalem,'" Melchior says.
Melchior applies "business thinking" to the problem, so she offers business solutions.
"What we are saying to the cultural institutions is that we are opening the gate for a whole new set of customers, with a different way of thinking, that need different services to what you have been dealing with until now," she says.
"You have to make the effort and work with them and create products that the customers want."
One thing the customers would want is translation. While the Cameri and Habimah theaters in Tel Aviv provide closed-circuit surtitles in English (and sometimes in other languages), attracting tourists to their performances, Jerusalem theaters do not.
If the Israel Festival could provide translations for its foreign plays, why can't the Jerusalem theater companies provide translations all year?
Moreover, every respectable city of culture needs three or four annual events that tourists can look forward to. Jerusalem has several such events – the Israel Festival, the film festival and the puppet festival are three examples that come to mind immediately. But they are not marketed.
"If you want to attract someone all the way from New York to the Israel Festival then he has to know about it well in advance," Melchior says. "By having a fixed schedule you can market it abroad."
Melchior, who lived for five years in Tel Aviv, dismisses the image that Jerusalem nightlife pales by comparison to nightlife hotspots like Tel Aviv or Eilat.
"Jerusalem definitely has atmosphere," she says. We don't need to be ashamed of what we don't have because we have so many other things to offer."
"The claim one hears all the time is that there is no culture in Jerusalem is not true," says Ophir Shemer, director of education and culture at the Shimshon Center, Beit Shmuel, which is home to the Jerusalem Theater Company.
"I think Jerusalem has the biggest range of culture in the country," Shemer says. He hopes that Beit Shmuel, which also provides tours of Jerusalem given by archeologists and historians, hopes to become a home for artists and performers in Jerusalem. By combining various performers into one show, Beit Shmuel hopes to make an attraction in which tourists can see artists, and then meet them after the show to learn what it means to be a performer in Jerusalem.
"It will be interesting for the tourists to see how the artists live in a city like this," Shemer says. "How, in a city with so many problems, there are artists nonetheless."
The Vertigo Dance Company is just the kind of local cultural attraction that Jerusalem can offer. Set up by husband-and-wife team Adi Sha'al and Noa Wertheim in 1992, the company of eight dancers produces contemporary dance pieces and workshops, and operates a dance school. The company travels all over Israel and the world with its own home-produced shows. In addition to regular performances, Vertigo offers dance workshops or the opportunity to meet performers after a show.
Yet of its 100 performances every year, only about five are in Jerusalem.
Sha'al says he tried contacting tour operators in the past but met with a general lack of organization that often meant missing potential tourists. He often found himself declining requests from tour operators for performances because the inquiries came at too short notice. On other occasions he learned of tour groups that went to Tel Aviv for the evening because they couldn't find anything interesting in Jerusalem.
Vertigo is already reaping the financial rewards of new contacts Sha'al made since attending the Startup Jerusalem conference and has provided new activities including studio performances for "birthright israel" trips during which participants met the dancers in their studio for a more personal and involved activity.
And Vertigo is also now working with the Tower of David Museum to perform itsPhoenix show within the historic compound that is one of the leading venues for alternative entertainment.
Museum director Shosh Yaniv says it makes sense to use Jerusalem's historical sites for performing arts.
"The joining of the two of them is exactly the difference between going to see a show in New York and Jerusalem, because the location here is something unique," she says.
Yaacov Fried, Director of Da'at Travel Services, provides tours for special-interest groups such as fund-raising organizations and educational groups, official delegations, universities and religious movements. He agrees that the cultural organizations are not geared to creating programs to serve tourists.
Aside from the language barrier, this kind of programming requires an understanding of the tourists' mentality. Fried believes that by providing tourists with a wider variety of cultural exposure they will be inclined to stay longer in the city and get a deeper meaning from their stay.
"The venues in town are very laid back about tourists," he says. "Now there are more tourists coming there is an opportunity for them to develop more variety." Fried says visitors from his groups have in the past asked him about attending cultural events but he was not always able to provide an answer. Since the Startup Jerusalem conference he has forged ties with Vertigo and engaged the dance company on several occasions.
Aside from squeezing the most out of what Jerusalem can already offer, Startup Jerusalem is also looking into creating new cultural attractions that will be unique to Jerusalem.
Ideas include street shows performed by drama students from local schools, a combined religious festival to celebrate the three faiths of the capital or a spice market that would combine the cultures of both the west and east of the city in for a single Middle Eastern flavor.
However, new festivals require financing and investors like to know they will see a return on their money. Melchior says Startup Jerusalem is looking for sponsors who are prepared to take the risk to its ideas come to life.
"The potential is there, Jerusalem is a brand name," Melchior says.