Passover vacationers are considered the peak of the religious tourism season, more so than the summer season. Many religious couples and families prefer to celebrate in a sabbath, without the hassle of cleaning the house and cooking for Seder night and the holiday. Celebrate like kings.
Faced with the great demand for Passover holidays, there is also a great supply. Many religious tourism companies offer vacationers at various scenic sites in Israel and abroad. Now, in the middle of the Omer counting period, it is possible to make initial summaries of the last Passover promotions, on the honey and the sting, on the bitter and the sweet. As every year, this year too there were people who enjoyed and ate Garrost, and compared to others who ate bitters.
Here is a review of the best resort – Asia Travel, and the worst – Ariel. The rest of the resorts are between the two in light or dark shades of gray.
on the honey
The company that is considered the best in Passover vacations is Asia Travel, with whom I also celebrated this year in Split in Croatia. Also a company Thorpelos stars at the top, and until recently a place of honor was reserved for the company at the top as well Scheinfeld Tourism.
Asia Travel Company hosted about 800 people at the luxury Meridian Hotel in Split. A worthy and very suitable choice in the opinion of the place and the opinion of the public. According to the local opinion – because on Passover we celebrate the Exodus from Egypt and the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea in which God made a SPLIT in the waters of the sea, and the children of Israel crossed with a sword.
The hotel kitchens were trained, and the entire hotel was only available to Asia Travel guests. We had plenty of food, plenty of types of dishes, with excellent taste and in unusual quantities. The main ceremony was held by the singer Israel Farnes, and in addition, private family ceremonies were also held in other halls of the hotel. The Asia Travel Company brought from the country not only an abundance of food, but also a very large team of chefs and cooks and confectioners. Most of the waiters were local.
On Hol Moed there were buffets full of goodies. At the Shabbat and Holiday meals, the food was served to the tables by waiters. Everything was served in a large hand and in large portions. There was so much food, that I was afraid of “bel tashshit”. I gained weight this Passover at Asia Travel.
Asia Travel also provided us with spiritual food. Every day there were Torah lessons from 2 rabbis, and fascinating lectures from some of the guests. Guided trips to tourist sites up to a two-hour drive from the hotel were also organized, including sailing to a neighboring island.
Split also has a rich Jewish history, which was explained to the guests by the guidance team headed by Aharon Shimoni. In the city is the oldest synagogue in Europe, which has been operating there since 1510. The main tourist attraction of Split is the palace of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Asia Travel’s guests were surprised to hear that he was born in Tiberias, was in contact with Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, and that he was mentioned favorably several times in the Jerusalem Talmud. On the bus ride from the hotel to the palace, one of the guides even learned with the passengers the relevant passages in Yerushalmi.
When I returned to Israel after Passover, I told about the Jewish sites to friends who had previously stayed in Split in the same hotel with another tour company. They did not get to hear these Jewish aspects from the other company.
Last evening, the Asia Travel Company also held a Mimona celebration with plenty of sweets of all kinds, and of course fresh mufflets as well.
Rabbi Benjamin Niyazov, one of the owners of Asia Travel, was in charge of all the complex logistics, with his right-hand man Shimson (Shimi) Ustoniyazov. During the entire holiday, I saw him coordinating and managing the serving, walking between the tables and in the kitchen, and interested in how the guests were feeling. I never saw him sit down to eat even one meal with us. I was fascinated by his attention to the smallest details, such as bringing prayer cycles in all forms to all the guests, printing special Passover Haggadahs for vacations in Split, making soul candles for guests on the second holiday, and so on. The great success stems from Benjamin’s extensive experience (in the photo:).
The Tor Plus company is also considered one of the best in the religious community. CEO Yaakov Cohen says that a Passover vacation is a professional and very complex matter. You need to know what to bring from Israel and what to buy abroad and where, how to transport the food to the hotel, and how to store it before Passover. Sometimes some of the products ordered by the chef get stuck on the way from Israel, and bringing replacements on a flight increases the expenses. When you are in a hotel abroad, there is a logistical problem of obtaining kosher products for Passover. Experienced companies know how to avoid such situations or solve them without the guests noticing that there was a problem. But for novices, this may create a crisis.
The Sheinfeld Tourism company has a reputation as one of the top three in the religious field, but this year it also had some glitches. One family left at the end of the first holiday in heartbreak because of family quarrels. On Passover last year, many of Sheinfeld’s guests were infected with the corona virus. I suggested to Israel Sheinfeld to respond and present his side, but he refuses and evades. If he comes back to us, I will also publish his words.
and on the sting
As every year, last Passover too, malfunctions were discovered in some of the religious tourism companies that caused suffering to their guests. The peak was at the Padernia Hotel in Ayia Napa in Cyprus, which was rented by the company ‘Ariel and Saralah Tourism and Leisure’. The number of malfunctions that happened to them this year is as large as all the malfunctions of all the companies in all the past years. What happened there was covered in newspapers and on television in Israel, and caused blasphemy. big.
Ariel and Sarahla Cohen have a lot of experience in organizing vacations in hotels in Israel, and this year they tried again abroad. Many were tempted to buy vacations from them at half the price of vacations abroad of other religious companies. But Ariel Tours guests report problems they had on vacation. I also became the addressee of complaints, because I recommended Ariel Tours to my neighbors.
The holiday started on the left foot. The first problem was arriving at the hotel. Many of the guests arrived at the hotel after lighting candles and entering the holiday due to malfunctions in the flight and transportation from the airport. The guests were reluctantly forced to desecrate the holiday. When they finally entered the hotel, the lobby was full of tables set up which prevented them from moving freely with their luggage. It turned out that the hotel’s dining room was too small to accommodate all of Ariel Tours’ customers, so tables were set up for Seder night in the lobby as well, and even outside in the cold.
The lobby and balcony were converted into an eating area
One of the guests writes to me about the rooms there: “Run-down rooms that look like her past in the 1950s. “Upgraded” rooms where we were met with mildew, a terrible lack of cleanliness, and insects of all kinds. There are no blankets, and when there is one – you get a blanket without a pillowcase. Some even received blood-stained sheets.” Otherwise reports on Facebook “Minus hostel level, dirty and extremely poor, no hot water in the shower, but with cockroaches. No towels, smelly bedding, a filthy room with no basic conditions. Who has heard of hotel guests begging for a clean towel, and when they get desperate they go to the supermarket and buy towels?” .
There were also quite a few problems with the food. “There is no food” One of the guests writes to me. “There are no fancy matzahs, there is not enough wine for 4 glasses,” another guest writes, “We arrived for lunch, and saw that all the dirty dishes from last night had not been washed. The tables were not set, and there was no possibility of a holiday dinner. To save the situation, my family and I washed all the dishes and served food But who ever heard of hotel guests washing dishes and serving food?…”.
The most serious mishap was when Rabbi Nehemiah Rotenberg removed the kashrut in the middle of Chul HaMoed.
This is because the non-Jewish kitchen workers brought trays of sourdough pizza and ate from them in the kitchen. Pizza crumbs also fell into the pots and the tray preparation table in the kosher kitchen for Passover.
Kosher was restored only after the cooking utensils were re-prepared for Pesach, and all plates and cutlery were replaced with disposable utensils.
These malfunctions caused great distress to Ariel customers, and therefore many of them left the hotel after the first holiday and flew back to Israel.
I presented the complaints to Ariel Cohen, the owner of the company. He acknowledges responsibility but does not take the blame. Ariel explains that he ordered the logistics from a supplier with whom he has had successful experience. But according to him this supplier, the company FLYWING, did not meet its obligations. During the last Sukkot holiday, the same supplier provided excellent service to Ariel customers on vacation at another hotel in Cyprus, and everyone was satisfied. Last Passover he messed up big time.
“I have a great heartache that people came and suffered,” Ariel Cohen says sadly. He is also suffering now because “it crushed my company”. (I remark to him that I see advertisements in the Parshas Shavuot bulletins about vacationers he is organizing for the upcoming Shavuot holiday, as if nothing had happened on Pesach. Ariel explains that he ordered these ads months ago, and has also already committed to hotels in Israel. This is not something new that is done after Pesach).
Ariel adds that he will do his best to correct the injustice. “We are thinking about a compensation plan” he announces. But on the other hand, he also expects his customers to show understanding. “There are people who paid 10,000 shekels, and now want to file a tort claim for millions. Ariel is a limited company, and there are no such sums in its coffers. We have funds to compensate in a reasonable way, and whoever does not settle for that, will be left with nothing if our company goes bankrupt.” As the Sages said, “You caught a lot – you didn’t catch it.”
There were also glitches in the accommodation in Split, but we the guests did not feel them. Before the holiday, the Croatian police stopped for inspection the containers with the kosher food for Passover, because they suspected that drugs were hidden in them. The police did not understand why Jews import from Israel food that can be bought cheaply in Croatia. The containers were carefully inspected for several days, and were released only one day before Passover. To solve the expected shortage, R. Binyamin brought more large kitbags full of food from the country, and let passengers like us put them on the plane as personal luggage. Secondly, during the holiday it turned out that the delicious chips were gone. I didn’t miss him because of the abundance of other dishes, but Benjamin was able to fly a few more tons of chips and potatoes from the country, and the problem was solved. The great advantage of Asia Travel is the experience. New tourism companies in the field of Pesach vacations would not know and be able to solve problems in this way.
As mentioned, Asia Travel and Ariel are examples of edge cases for good and bad. Between the two are located other less good and less bad religious tourism companies. Complaints about more companies are piling up on my desk. For example, at the Knafiim company’s vacation in Sinai, there was not enough wine for four glasses on Seder night. And so on. Therefore, my personal conclusion is to always prefer an Israeli tourism company with experience in Passover vacations, which works with a hotel that has experience in Passover vacations for religious people, who already knows our constraints.
To sum up the Passover vacationers of Israel, it is possible to say that “the Pesach arrangement was eliminated as usual”. Who counted” all the millions of shekels they made on the holiday.
