No Room at the Inns

How appropriate...

From Mere Comments:

By Judith Sudilovsky
Bethlehem, 22 December (ENI)-- Hotel capacity is often around 100 percent these days, so things are looking up for Bethlehem says the head of the city's chamber of commerce and industry board.

Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairperson, Samir Hazboun, told reporters that Bethlehem had celebrated its one millionth visitor of the year in November. This, Hazboun said, was the highest number in decades, and he hoped there would be at least 100,000 more visitors by the end of 2008.

Yet, although visitors from India, Poland and Russia are expected to increase, the people of Bethlehem believe the current world economic crisis will hit them after Christmas, Hazboun noted.

Of the current visitors to Bethlehem, 76 percent are pilgrims, and while most tourists stay in the city for only about two hours, some who come for religious reasons spend the night in order to attend a church service or pray at the holy sites.

Bethlehem has a hotel capacity of 3,000 rooms, Hazboun said, and the construction of three new hotels now being completed will add another 250 rooms. Still, he said this would not be enough to accommodate all the visitors who come to Bethlehem.

The city is increasingly perceived as a safe destination, Hazboun asserted. He said Bethlehem currently receives about 100 tour buses daily.

Hazboun said 27 percent of the 185,000 residents of the district, which includes the "Christian triangle" of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jalla and some smaller villages, are Christian. In Bethlehem proper, which has 31,000 residents, the figure is 45 percent