 Hi there, welcome back to my YouTube channel, this is Daniel Rosel here. I came across yesterday this article on the times of Israel by Jessica Steinberg, who is one of their journalists, and it just kind of caught my attention, particularly one quote in it that I just thought was extraordinary and which I know is going to just like completely fly under the radar, but I think it's so telling and I think it's so typical of the mindset of way too many people in Israel that just keeps this country so overpriced. Now, I have been living in Israel for seven years. I came here because as a Jew, growing up in Ireland, I felt sort of out of place and that, you know, if we have a Jewish country, Israel is where we should be. So that was my reason, but you know, I'm sure it might seem a bit odd to people when I criticize stuff, but I have, for whoever reads my online writing, my 414 medium followers at the time recording this, but I've been very critical of the cost of living in Israel and I don't believe that it's sort of like unpatriotic or anti-Israel to just kind of pretend that there aren't these problems here. And one of those problems, speaking of the cost of living that really, really irritates me, as somebody living here and working here and paying taxes to Israel and trying to live sort of a normal middle-class lifestyle is just the fact that like it does not make sense to holiday in Israel for Israelis. It just is a waste of money. It's just like much better value to go to Turkey or to go to Greece or to go to Italy. Now that Ryan is here and there's been like this, the open skies agreement, Israeli hotels are just not competitive. You got like lousy service for a high price tag in general. And this article just had this quote from one of the like CEOs of the major hotel groups here that just said, I can't believe he just said that like in black and white, that's the attitude. And I'm like, when we sort of like tried to investigate, well, why is Israel so expensive? What's the deal with this kind of crazy high cost of living that according to a recent survey was the ace highest in the world? And people will say, you know, well, it's a small country and people have to pay for kosher certification, the revenue and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that people fail to appreciate the extent to which greed and this kind of like attitude that Israeli hoteliers particularly deserve high prices. And there's been articles like this coming out since the start of the pandemic saying that, you know, you'd expect under normal circumstances supply and demand Israel being so dependent on international tourism that if that just was stopped, that you would see a reduction in prices for hotel rates and Israelis availing of the chance to stay in their small country. And I think that would be a tremendous thing. Israel is such a small country and I'm actually a huge fan of vacationing or a staycationing as somebody who has a hard time getting into holiday mode and turning off from my work. I love the idea of going down to Tel Aviv or somewhere else in Israel as opposed to going abroad. You don't need to fly anywhere. You don't need to right now in COVID do all the COVID bureaucracy, all the PCR tests, but it still doesn't really make sense. And I think that's ridiculous. So yeah, there have been these articles coming out since the start of the pandemic about how miraculously despite COVID, the hotel rates are not diminishing. And I think this article does a good job at explaining why. So it's reduced from hotels, bad on local guests this season, but don't expect a bargain. What a surprise. Don't expect a bargain in Israel. Who would have ever thought it giving up on foreign tourists, the approaching holiday season, high end establishments seek to woo domestic tourists to spend their vacation shackles, but they don't want to lower their prices. So that to me is a strange dynamic. Now I jumped out to the quote that just really I was like, hang on, that is ridiculous. Why would you like, why, why would you say this to a news reporter? Like, that's, you know, it's going to be published in like an online newspaper and you know, people are going to read that. Like, aren't you ashamed about this? We were fully booked for the holiday this year. I said, Avner, Avner on general manager, the Jerusalem Waldorf Astoria when families come from abroad, I'm going to be talking about families and foreign tourism in Israel. We're mostly talking about like foreign Jews. We're talking here about the Sukkot, the, which is one of the festivals in the Hageem, which is when, you know, Jews are mandated to sit in booze and it's like a, it's a lovely holiday and all the restaurants and hotels put up their own Sukkot for the festival. And it's generally the way that it works in Israel when you're working here is that most people actually take the whole Hageem off because a lot of employers give you, they have this like offer for their staff that if you holiday during the intermediate days of Sukkot and the other festivals, they will consider it, they'll consider a, or they'll count your time off as like only a half time. It's a bit complicated as to like when they do it or when they have to do it, but that's a common practice of companies that so you can take a week off and only use up three days of vacation. So a lot of people just take the whole Hageem off. And now it says here own and his staff no longer believe those who call tourists will show up as Corona virus Delta variant cases soaring. Some of the bookings having canceled quite yet, but own is pretty sure they won't make it. And this changes the scope of his most important seasons. Now in August, the Waldorf is full, but with Israeli tourists rather than the usual cries of European and American visitors. The situation is typical for Israeli hotels this summer as most foreign tourists can't enter Israel amid the pandemic, nor will they likely be able to during the high holiday season in August, which is almost upon us. So the luxury hotel changed its rates and minimum lengths of stay for the holiday season, hoping that Israeli tourists will take advantage of the opportunity to spend part of the holiday at the Waldorf. The high end hotel is now offering a two night minimum and a 2,500 shackle that's $772 at the time of writing price tag per night, including breakfast as well as reduce prices on meal. Everything is reduced to I'm going to just highlight the quotes that kind of tick me off. Everything is reduced to the level that the Israeli market can accommodate. So and then he says then it says like as if it's like shame as if it would be like shameful to like offer a discount or admit that like it was good value. It's not cheap. Don't misunderstand me, but it's not as high as it was before. So like just this kind of whole idea that you have to reduce prices for just for like locals to be able to stay your hotels is I don't know. I find that kind of obnoxious and then that like you'd like fall over yourself to like emphasize that like it's not cheap. Yes, $772 per night is not cheap by the vast majority of people's standards in the world. But yeah, it's just like this weird attitude of like where it would like kill these guys to reduce their prices or that that's kind of how you feel. But there won't be any reduced prices at the nearby King David or the David Citadel. And these are two really fancy hotels, five star hotels in Jerusalem. Now here's here's the quote I take issue with. We're still not in desperate mode, said Ronan Nisenbaum, CEO of the Dan Hotel. So the Dan is one of the big hotel chains in Israel. There's hotels, Dan hotels, I think in most major cities. So Ronan Nisenbaum says, we're still not in desperate mode. We'd rather but here it is. Here it is in black and white. I just I can't believe you'd say this. We'd rather have fewer rooms at the right rate to make it feasible. Our strategy is to maintain the integrity. It's just jumped on me. Our strategy is to maintain the integrity of our rates to deliver amazing service and food, even if it means our volume will be lower. So basically what this guy is saying is he would prefer to sell. He's acknowledging the fact that like because of COVID and the fact that foreign tourists who traditionally constitute a major amount of the hotel's guests, he's acknowledging the fact that demand is down for these hotel rooms. And you know, under normal circumstances, you think, well, they'd want to keep their hotel rooms occupied. And he is saying in black and white that they would rather actually have lower occupancy just so that they can keep these typically overpriced rates going rather than it would like hurt them so much to reduce the rate. They talk about the integrity of our rates as if there's something like as if there's some sort of a worthiness to charging a bunch of money for hotel rooms. And I don't know, from my perspective, like spending vacations in Israel just doesn't make sense. It's a ripoff. So I this mentality just drives me nuts. And it's not just about hotels. You'll see this. I've seen this here with landlords who will less a rental go unrented for seven months, which means they're losing money every single month rather than reduce the rates. Probably for the same reason, because they think we have to maintain the integrity of our rates. We couldn't reduce rates because there's less demand. We can't do that. We have to keep the prices in Israel really high. Now, I know I kind of seem just a bit angry, but it's just this attitude really bugs me, not just because I think it's obnoxious and I do, but because I think right now what this article is highlighting is that there is sort of we're at this sort of rare point in history of which we have this weird situation going on this pandemic in which foreigners cannot come to Israel. So the hotels are have to deal with an Israeli clientele. And look, I'm I wouldn't stay in a hotel in Jerusalem. I live in Jerusalem. I like my place. I'm not trying to say I'd love to get a deal to stay in the Dan hotel. I'm just saying what a short-sighted attitude that you would rather cling to your normal time rates and maintain the integrity. Like what a nurse does that mean? He's saying it black and white. We'd rather have fewer rooms at the right rate to make it feasible. Our strategies to maintain the integrity of a rate to deliver amazing food, even if it means our volume will be lower. What a what a small minded view that rather than sort of seize this opportunity to offer actually decent reasonably priced hotel accommodation to people living in Israel to people spending their tax money and making the country succeed. It would kill you to lower your rates so much that you'd rather have less rooms booked and just wait for the foreign tourists to come back to you. So you can go back to creaming them. It just disgusts me. This added it really disgusts me. And another article just to support my case here from Ynet, Israel's hotels among most expensive in the world. So even though in Israel the sky is blue, sometimes you just have to Google articles or find evidence to so that you don't doubt yourself that the sky is indeed blue. This is just saying that there is a survey called the Hotel Price Index. And this is an old article from 2014. But I'd be very, very surprised if anything has changed. I thought it was actually booking.com and they take their price survey and they found that basically Israel, just like our cost of living is the ace highest in the world and the cost of real estate is the second highest in the world per square meter, just to add to the long list of statistics that kind of confirm that Israel is actually for the most part a gigantic rip-off. You have this article saying that Israel, Israel hotels are among the most expensive in the world. And typically they do not offer particularly good service, in my opinion, for their exorbitant rates. And again, you can say, well, it's because of the cost of workers here. As if the minimum wage in Israel is super high. It's not. It's the cost of kosher certification. And I just wonder, is this the answer? This quote from one of the major CEOs of hotels, nothing to do with rates. It's due to the fact that they do not want to lower their rates because they know that they can charge foreign Jews exorbitant amounts of money just because they know that they really want to come to Israel for Pesach, where it's much easier for Pesach or for Sukkot or for any religious hospital, any religious holiday. And I just find that obnoxious profiteering and the unwillingness to be flexible when we have these marketing conditions, I think, is just really, really appalling personally. As well as that, I think the fact that this guy thought that was an okay thing to just put out there to a journalist no one would be published, I think speaks volumes about the fact that these guys don't even see this attitude as problematic. And I think there's so many people like that in Israel. So that was my rant for the day. Basically, I don't believe in holidaying in Israel because I think it's a rip-off and I think that it makes more sense to go to other countries that do not have this growth culture of profiteering and exploitation. So if I could, I would probably be booking a vacation to Portugal or Turkey or Greece, but seeing as the borders are closed, it would probably be a couple more months, at least before we can get out of Israel for a while.