Apparently someone finally heard my plea... the plea of a humble tour guide of Israel.
How can it be that a city which essentially was the capital of the Jewish world for 850 years (or at least the Jewish capital of the Land of Israel) gets totally bypassed by Jewish pilgrims? [Note: Christian pilgrims often stay there out of lack of choice as it is the gateway to Lake Kinneret's NE shore, which was the location of Jesus' Galilean ministry.]
People spend half a day in Tzfat/Safed/Zefat which was the capital of the Jewish world for 50 years but basically just associate Tiberias with the citys namesake, a Roman Caesar with a penchant for child molestation (okay that was a lot of them). That and a bunch of yuck hotels whose A/C doesn't always work in a city that can reach 120F/47C in the summer. There is one historic and lovely hotel - the Scots Hotel (with a great wine bar). There is only one real bar on the water, which is only open in the summer (shoutout to the great staff at Choco Bar in Tiberias who were awesome in immediately removing someone who harassed one of my Birthright participants several years ago and escorted us to our bus just in case). It basically just looked like a depressed resort town when it could be so much more.
Well now that is [hopefully] going to change.
An announcement was just made which is going to inject a ton of money into the tourism sector in Tiberias. Money will be invested to upgrade the city's hotels, build new and varied accommodation options and most importantly, create a municipal tourism company and develop a tourism master plan for the city. It's about time.
Okay to be fair, this process started a few years ago - they have a real mall now and a few nice new hotels such as the U Boutique. But this hopefully is going to be a game changer.
Pliny the Elder once called Tiberius (the Caesar) "the gloomiest of men." For way too long his city has reflected that. I can't wait to see what the future holds. Just don't make it be like Caligula (the nut-job who succeeded Tiberius as Caesar).
For more on the plan, click here: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israeli-government-to-inject-145m-into-tiberias-tourism-industry-632247
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