During Passover Israeli’s flock to beach destinations and popular touristy areas like the Dead Sea, Tiberias & Eilat. Expect to pay more if “Beach or Water-Front” is your thing. On the contrary if you just care about good food and nice amenities you can save a lot of money by staying in a 4-5 star business district or hi tech area hotel (Central Tel-Aviv, Raanana etc). Why? Simple, corporate Israel is basically shut down on Passover and these hotels don’t want to stay empty and therefore offer competitive pricing. “Non touristy” peripheral areas of the country farther from the destinations will also be a significantly cheaper play. (Negev Desert, Nahariya etc).

Cuisine limited to non Kitniyot food will definitely raise the price of the hotel by a bit, but more than that, since most hotels in Israel by default of the demographics serve Kitniyot, the selection for Kitniyot hotels will be much greater and cheaper (more supply). Those who don’t eat Matzo which comes into contact with liquid on Pesach will need to search for “Non Shruya” hotels and can expect to pay significantly more for that as well. Here is the “hack”, those who don’t eat Kitniyot but do eat wet Matzo will save a lot of money and get significantly tastier food. That’s because the “no wet matzo menu” is very limiting for chefs and the Kashrus supervision costs a lot of money as well.

Glatt Kosher meat Supervised by the Israeli Rabbanut may or may not add to the price of a hotel. However, higher Glatt Kosher meat supervision delivered by a private organization or a “Badatz” will certainly significantly raise the price of the hotel.

Markups in the industry are pretty standard when it comes to the larger agencies. However, If you are booking with the hotel owner directly it will usually be cheaper than booking with a large agency that rented the hotel and is now heavily marking it up. However, many smaller agencies that run Passover programs, like the one we are running this year, are willing to get wholesale rates from the hotel owners for an agreed amount of rooms and then pass on a large amount of those savings for the sake of the group.

This year for example we are working with a non Kitniyot, yes wet matzo and Regular Rabbanut Glatt Kosher Passover hotel. The hotel is also located in a high tech center in Central Israel next to Tel-Aviv. So folks, if you followed the math above then this hotel should be significantly well priced for it’s value. Good luck finding the right hotel for your family.