our government does not leave anything to chance..


if you thought the special treatment given to the 3 millionth tourist was a nice story, TheMarker reveals how it came about. I don't know if that will put a damper on your being impressed or make you more impressed.

Letting the 3 millionth tourist walk through Ben Gurion with an amazing tourism treat is just too risky. Who knows who that lucky person might be? Who knows if they will speak or understand English? Maybe they'll be people of questionable character. Anything could happen. Maybe they wouldn't agree to change their plans, to be photographed and used in a publicity stunt, or whatnot.

Tourist #3,000,000 did not walk through the gates of Ben Gurion by chance at that time. She was selected and directed.

According to TheMarker, the Ministry of Tourism spent a lot of time figuring out around when the 3 millionth tourist would come and they narrowed it down to the day and arrival on a plane landing between 8am and 10:30am. They identified that the tourist would be on a flight from either Miami, New York, Romania, or Russia.

So, they sent agents on all those flights to look for someone who meets the requirements - willing to change plans for a special 48 hour tour, someone photogenic, someone who speaks English well, and someone willing to sign a piece of paper allowing the government to make use of their images in marketing campaigns.

With the flights from New York and Miami arriving too early in the count, they narrowed it down to the passenger being on the Wizair flight from Romania. Ami Ayalon was on the flight as an agent of the Ministry of Tourism and he went looking for tourist #3,000,000. On the entire flight there were only two people that qualified as per he MoT's requirements. One was the eventual winner and the other was an employee of WizAir. The employee of WizAir passed it on so nothing would be suspicious, and the lucky tourist was escorted through Ben Gurion to claim her special vacation...

It sounds like an elite commando unit was needed to put this all together...