It was Friday morning in Beersheba, 10 days ago. Fifty-one-year-old Sima Elimeleh huddled with her husband, Avi, and their daughters in their apartment’s safe room as air raid sirens echoed throughout the city.
It was a day after a ballistic missile from Iran struck the nearby Soroka Medical Center, heightening the family’s anxiety.
News broke that another missile had hit their quiet neighborhood, causing severe damage to numerous buildings.
As residents reeled from the shock and began to assess the destruction, Elimeleh, general manager of the Leonardo Negev Hotel, quickly shifted gears.
She asked her husband to manage preparations for Shabbat dinner and instructed her hotel management team via WhatsApp to report immediately to the hotel.
Transforming hotels to host evacuees
Despite being only three months into her new role, she acted like a long-time professional and arrived there within 10 minutes. Her team wasn’t far behind.
Within an hour, the hotel had transformed. Guest rooms were readied, public spaces organized, refreshments laid out, and even a kindergarten was established.
“We at Fattal Hotels have experience hosting 20,000 evacuees since October 7,” she explains. “But when it’s your own hometown, people you know, whose children go to school with yours, it hits differently. I felt a sense of mission. We were determined to do everything we could for those who had lost their homes and their sense of safety.”
After the ceasefire was announced last week, Beersheba suffered another deadly attack, claiming four lives. A second wave of evacuees soon arrived at Elimeleh’s hotel. By nightfall, 500 civilians were housed there. Many expected to remain for at least a month.
Hosting displaced families in the aftermath of October 7
THE EVENTS of October 7 and the ensuing war with Hamas displaced over 200,000 Israelis, particularly from communities near Gaza and later from the North.
Many were sheltered in hotels and short-term rentals. What began as temporary arrangements soon extended into months, testing the limits of logistics, finances, and emotional resilience.
Hoteliers found themselves in dual roles: offering standard hospitality services while simultaneously meeting humanitarian needs.
Guest rooms were repurposed for long-term stays. Support services, mental health care, educational programming, and childcare were coordinated in part by the government.
The hard-earned experience from those months proved invaluable when Iranian missile strikes targeted Israeli cities this June. Since the beginning of the military campaign in Iran, the country’s tourism industry has faced a dramatic downturn.
Regional tensions, heightened travel advisories, flight cancellations, and general insecurity have nearly brought international tourism to Israel to a standstill.
Even domestic tourism, especially in the North and along the southern coast, has evaporated. In this vacuum, many hotels saw housing evacuees as both a moral imperative and a practical solution.
One person well-positioned to manage this challenge is Romi Gorodisky, deputy general manager of the Israel Hotel Association. Known as a behind-the-scenes powerhouse, Gorodisky has led crisis responses since 1996, when the IDF launched Operation Grapes of Wrath against Hezbollah.
On October 7, she helped establish a command center to oversee hotel placements for evacuees from both the Gaza and northern borders. When Operation Rising Lion against Iran began, she launched a new center.
“In the Iron Swords operation, everything was centrally coordinated via the National Evacuation, Care, and Casualties Authority. This time, the responsibility shifted to municipalities,” she says.
While the previous efforts focused on peripheral communities, this round struck Israel’s urban centers.
“Of the 15,000 evacuees, 10,000 were placed in hotels,” she explains. “The rest stayed with friends or family. We worked with municipalities to place people close to their original neighborhoods, preserving familiar environments and community continuity,” she says.
Her team’s real-time room inventory system, another possible Israeli innovation, allowed for rapid, efficient placement of evacuees. The tool may well become a model for crisis management globally, and a hotel school must.
Among those displaced was 72-year-old Danny Sadeh, former tourism correspondent for Yediot Aharonot, who has reviewed hotels worldwide and locally for 20 years. He was evacuated just hours after a missile struck a building near his Tel Aviv apartment.
“I found myself with my partner in a 14-sq.-m. room at the Brown Bobo Hotel, along with 100 other civilians,” he recounts. “The room is small, but the food is excellent and the staff is incredibly supportive.”
Sadeh, who has stayed in over 250 hotels in 40 countries, says this stay is unlike any other.
“This is the first time I’ve had to bring my dog. Running to the basement during sirens, especially when the elevators are full, isn’t pleasant. Much of our time is spent on paperwork related to our damaged apartment. This is not a hotel stay I ever imagined.”
How hoteliers adapt to unexpected influx of guests
SO, HOW are hoteliers in metropolitan Tel Aviv responding to this unexpected influx of guests? Eran Ketter, head of the Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management at Kinneret Academic College, offers some perspective.
“From January to April 2025, Tel Aviv hotels saw only 45% occupancy due to the sluggish return of international tourism. The arrival of evacuees has improved this, offering hotels a much-needed revenue stream, at least temporarily.”
Still, challenges remain. Many evacuees will struggle to find new housing. Parts of the Tel Aviv metropolis are some of the world’s most expensive.
“However, the hospitality industry has adapted. In 2024, many hotels experimented with hybrid models, hosting evacuees alongside regular guests.
While this brings operational challenges and concerns about guest experience, most people seem to understand the unique reality we’re living in.
To avoid friction, larger hotel chains may designate specific properties for evacuees while reserving others for tourists. Flexibility will be key,” says Ketter.
Ask any hotelier, and they’ll tell you: we long for the day when tourism resumes in full force.
Until then, we will continue to serve evacuees quietly, professionally, and with compassion.
With the war in Gaza, the inbound full force wish looks like a mirage at the moment.
The writer is the Travel Flash Tips publisher.