Christmas in Bethlehem – Celebration or Disaster? It all depends on your source.
On yesterday’s ABC Radio AM, listeners were given a report about the upcoming “gloomy Christmas in Bethlehem” and how local Palestinians were expecting nobody to come to Manger Square for the festivities.
The ABC (along with most other international media) ran similar reports before Christmas last year when 25,000 people attended the various festivities (an all time record) and not surprisingly, those media outlets who concocted these erroneous reports were never gracious enough to admit they got it totally wrong last year.
Earlier this week, in my capacity as Marketing Manager for Greece and Mediterranean Travel Centre I rang up my old colleagues at the Israel Ministry of Tourism to ascertain the access arrangements for Australian travellers wanting to be involved in the Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem and I was told that access arrangements including frequent shuttle bus services between Jerusalem and Bethlehem were being provided by the Israel Ministry of Tourism for international tourists and Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and Gaza to ease their passage to Bethlehem.
They also advised me that as of last night 18,000 people (mainly international tourists) had booked their free admission tickets to attend the Midnight Mass celebrations at Manger square, fewer than 2005 but almost double the average annual attendance of about 10,000.
So who do you believe? The ABC or the Israel Ministry of Tourism.
Its up to you, but in the Middle East good news rarely makes a headline and as Travelmole has demonstrated this week good news about Fiji rarely makes the mainstream media which is why travel professionals need to take time to read Travel Mole and dare I say it other industry media [Comment by The Mole – “NEVER”] to get the facts.
Commentary by David Beirman, TravelMole’s Tourism Crisis and Recover Specialist and Correspondent.
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