Ministry of Tourism
...now browsing by tag
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
The Light at the End of the Tunnel (taken at Beit Shean amphitheater)
I wanted to update you all about the exam process. For starters, I am proud and excited to announce that I passed the written exam! I got the news on the morning of January 1st, so what a great way to start the New Year! In fact, the test was very straightforward, with no real curve balls (
as I wrote previously), and there was a fairly high passing rate.
Additionally, earlier this week I received the appointment for my meeting at the Ministry of Tourism for my oral exam. I will actually be the first in my class (I believe) to present — 9 AM on Thursday January 26, in just over 2 weeks. I feel relatively well-prepared, but I definitely have more work to do in preparation. Both in terms of preparing my guiding, and my itinerary for the day, as well as general prep for the open question section of the oral.
Click to continue »
Posted in Tour Guide Course | 6 Responses »
Tags: archaeology, art, blog, Dig for a Day, exam, geography, gravesite, license, Maresha, Ministry of Tourism, Sidonian
Monday, December 12th, 2011
The cover page of the written licensing exam
As most of you know, I took the written portion of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism licensing exam for tour guides this past Sunday, December 4. (For my posts on preparing for the exam see
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3 and
Part 4.) Since one of the focuses of this blog is to provide information to others who are interested in taking the tourguide course in Israel, I wanted to fill you all in a bit on this past administration of the exam.
For starters, I will say that I feel really good about my performance on the exam, and am fairly certain that I will pass. Obviously, there is no way of knowing for sure until I hear back from them (probably in another 2-3 weeks), but I’ll say that I’ll be relatively surprised if I don’t pass. Mainly this is because, while I would not say this exam was easy, I don’t think it was particularly tough, nor did I think there was any part of it that was “out there” or designed to screw with us. It was fairly straightforward, and I feel like I was about as prepared as I could be. I can’t really imagine getting a test that would be preferable to this one, which is why I would be disappointed if I failed this one.
Click to continue »
Posted in Tour Guide Course | 1 Response »
Tags: exam, itineraries, license, Ministry of Tourism, Negev
Thursday, December 1st, 2011
The Geobasics book from Biblical Backgrounds, Inc.
Way back in the first installment of this series, I promised that I would write a post about a specific study aid that I had come across and which I felt was an excellent tool. Actually, however, this post is about a whole suite of products that are available for sale from a small company called Biblical Backgrounds, Inc.
You won’t find much about the company on their website, though who they are is not the important thing. Rather, what they have created is an in-depth and rather unique way to understand the Land of Israel. Using their tools, you gain a deeper understanding of the events of the Bible (seemingly the main goal of the company), but you also can better learn and comprehend the extra-Biblical history and archaeology of the Holy Land.
So what do they offer?
Click to continue »
Posted in Product Review, Tour Guide Course | No Responses »
Tags: Biblical Backgrounds, exam, geography, guide, history, license, Middle East, Ministry of Tourism, study aids
Thursday, November 24th, 2011
The cover page of the written licensing exam
In this edition of this mini series of posts, I want to discuss a little bit about my strategy in preparing to take the Ministry of Tourism exam to become a licensed tour guide in Israel. Hopefully this will be helpful to others who are going through the course, which was always one of my goals when I started this blog.
As most of you probably don’t know, I used to work in the test prep field, teaching GMATs and LSATs for The Princeton Review. I did that for many years in both New York City and Los Angeles, and have continued to do a bit of that here in Israel, also moving on to other tests such as the GRE and SAT. So whereas I recognize that this licensing exam is vastly different than those highly standardized tests, I still feel that I have some insight into test preparation methods. And hopefully I’m also correct that it has made me fairly good at taking tests!
Click to continue »
Posted in Tour Guide Course | No Responses »
Tags: exam, guide, license, Ministry of Tourism
Monday, September 26th, 2011
The written part of the licensing exam
I’ve spoken many times about the licensing exams that we all need to pass before we can become licensed tour guides here in Israel. But I realized that I never have really discussed much about what is actually on the exams! So as part of this little series on my preparations for the exam, I wanted to summarize for you what is on the two licensing exams I’ll be taking over the next few months.
By the way, I say licensing exams, in plural, because there is both a written exam and an oral one. I’ll fill you in on both in this post.
Click to continue »
Posted in Tour Guide Course | 4 Responses »
Tags: exam, guide, license, Ministry of Tourism
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
The cover page of the written licensing exam
A while back, when I was just starting the tour guide course, I wrote a couple of posts about the licensing exam and the overall pass/fail rate on them. That was over a year and a half ago, and since then I have not written much on the subject. But now as I approach the end of my course, it is getting down to the time when I need to begin preparing for the exam. (I will be taking the written exam at the end of November.)
So I wanted to write a bit more about the exam, pass/fail rates and, most importantly, how I am preparing for the exam. I will do this in a short series of posts, of which this is the first.
Click to continue »
Posted in Tour Guide Course | 6 Responses »
Tags: exam, license, Ministry of Tourism
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
Logo of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
I’m going to try to start doing regular posts where I summarize recent news stories with relevance to the tourism industry in Israel. These might have to do with plans the Tourism Ministry is making, events or news about hotels or airlines, or anything that might affect the tour guiding business directly. If any of you come across relevant news stories that you think I might not have seen, please feel free to forward my way! Thanks! And as always, I’d love to hear any responses or opinions in the comments section.
Click to continue »
Posted in Israeli Tourism | 1 Response »
Tags: airlines, business, Canada, Chanukkah, Christian pilgrims, El Al, holidays, hotels, Jerusalem, Jordan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Tourism, Misezhnikov, Palestinian Authority, Russia, Tel Aviv, tourism, UK
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010
Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, seen from Manger Square (photo taken from Wikimedia Commons, by Wayne McLean)
One of the questions that I face as I prepare to become a licensed tourguide here in Israel relates to the future of this great country. Uncertainty is a key word that describes the situation of Israel’s future, and it makes preparing for my future career all the more difficult. It also makes my preparations more emotional, while I also delineate between my hopes for my career and my hopes for Israel’s future as a country.
A few recent news stories, that seem narrowly focused on specific laws that affect the industry, instead made me think more about what my career may be like in a future Israel. And they also made me think about what I’d like it to be like.
Click to continue »
Posted in Israeli Tourism | 3 Responses »
Tags: business, gravesite, history, license, Ministry of Tourism, Palestinian Authority, politics
Monday, November 1st, 2010
Israel Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov (Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of Michael Feigin)
The news story that has most recently gotten all of the anti-Israel complainants in an uproar is this one, quoting Israel’s Minister of Tourism Stas Misezhnikov as calling for a boycott on Israeli tourism to Turkey. This came in response to Israeli news reports that said Turkey had classified Israel as a threat to regional security (though apparently various reports used different terminology for the same apparent move by Turkey). The web has plenty of blog posts and I’ve seen tons of tweets in my Twitter feed that have made this seem like a horrible thing for Misezhnikov to have said.
My question: why all the uproar?
Click to continue »
Posted in Israeli Tourism, Miscellaneous | No Responses »
Tags: Ministry of Tourism, Misezhnikov, Turkey
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
A screenshot of the new "iSrael" app at the iPhone app store.
I have said before that I am fairly pleased with the current direction that the Ministry of Tourism is taking. I can’t say I like every single thing they’ve done, but overall I think they are working very hard at increasing the numbers of tourists visiting here. They have stated their goal is to attract an extra 1 million tourists per year by 2012. And with tourism numbers here continuing their steady rise, it seems like they are accomplishing their goals.
But luckily, the Ministry is not just focusing on bringing tourists in, by removing entry visas and advertising around the world. They also apparently recognize that improving the tourist experience within Israel is equally important.
And so, in keeping with the forward-thinking nature of the Ministry’s social media campaigns, they have continued to leverage the technologies of the moment to improve the experience for incoming tourists. On Sunday, the Ministry launched iSrael — an app for the iPhone that is designed to enhance the Israeli tourism experience.
Click to continue »
Posted in Israeli Tourism | No Responses »
Tags: iPhone, Ministry of Tourism, technology
