How to Market a Business in Eilat by Season: A Marketing Calendar and Budget for a Full Year
You market a business in Eilat by the tourism calendar, not by a regular calendar. Demand comes in waves. Passover, summer and Sukkot are the peaks, and winter is quiet. You shift the budget to the weeks before each peak, because Israelis book their vacation in advance. In the weak season you turn to residents and prepare the website and the SEO for the next wave. Here you will find a 12 month calendar with the demand, the events, the budget and what to update each month.
Why marketing in Eilat is not like any other city
Marketing in Eilat is different because almost the whole city lives off tourism, and tourism does not arrive at a steady pace. According to a State Comptroller report from 2021, about 90% of the jobs in Eilat are tied to tourism. The city has about 57 thousand residents according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), and against them millions of visitors pass through every year. In January through August 2025, Eilat hotels recorded 4.7 million overnight stays, which is 33.8% of all hotel stays in Israel, per the CBS. We collected the rest of the numbers on the Eilat tourism numbers page, which we update every quarter.
For a business, this means you have two completely different audiences. A resident who lives here all year and looks for a service close to home. And a visitor who comes for a few days, spends a lot, and disappears. They type different things into Google, arrive at different times, and respond to different messages. One campaign for both does not work well for either.
The second difference is seasonality. In a regular Israeli city, demand for most businesses is fairly steady through the year. In Eilat, hotel occupancy jumped from 66.4% in the first quarter of 2024 to 87.9% in the third quarter, per the CBS. A gap like that changes the whole logic of a marketing budget. Whoever spends the same amount every month pays too much when there is no demand and too little when there is.
The Eilat year in four seasons
The year in Eilat splits into four quarters, and each one has a character of its own. The CBS occupancy numbers for 2024 tell the story in four figures.
The gap between the strong season and the weak one is big, but even the weak one is not empty. In January through September 2025, occupancy in Eilat stood at 67.8% versus 52.7% nationwide, per the CBS. So even on a yearly average, Eilat is fuller than the national average. The question is not whether to advertise in winter, but to whom and how much.
- First quarter, January to March. Occupancy 66.4%. The quiet months. Pleasant weather for hiking, but midweek is weak. Demand only starts moving toward Passover
- Second quarter, April to June. Occupancy 82.4%. Passover and the holiday week fill the city, followed by Independence Day and Shavuot. June is a transition month before the summer school break
- Third quarter, July to September. Occupancy 87.9%. The peak of the year. The summer school break brings families for two straight months, and at the end of summer comes the jazz festival. September depends on the holiday dates
- Fourth quarter, October to December. Occupancy 71.9%. Sukkot gives a short peak, then a drop. Autumn is pleasant and brings sports events and hikers. Hanukkah closes the year with a small wave
A month by month calendar of demand, events and what to do
The table below splits the year into 12 months and attaches to each month the demand level, what happens in the city, and what to do with your budget, your website and your Google Business Profile. Demand is based on the quarterly CBS occupancy for 2024. Holidays and events move from year to year, so we wrote them by season and not by date. Check the exact dates of festivals and sports events on the Eilat Tourism Corporation events calendar before building a campaign.
Read the table through your own business. A restaurant will linger on the updates column, because that is where the hours and reviews live. An attraction on the budget column. A business that serves residents will find its months in the weak rows of the table.
| Month | Demand | What happens | What to do with the budget | What to update |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | Low. First quarter 66.4% occupancy in 2024 per the CBS | Pleasant weather. Residents and desert hikers. Decent weekends and weak midweek | Base budget. Aim at residents and weekends. Most of the effort goes to SEO and content | Winter hours in your Google Business Profile. Start building your Passover and summer pages on the site, because Google needs time |
| February | Low | The quietest month of the year. Comfortable weather for hiking in the Eilat Mountains and the Arava | Base budget. Resident deals. The time to test landing pages and new ads cheaply | New photos. Your business description. Review requests from regular customers |
| March | Starting to climb | Purim. Passover bookings close now. Passover falls in late March or in April, depending on the year | Raise the budget for a Passover campaign aimed at people planning from the center of the country | A Passover page or holiday package on the site. Holiday hours in the profile. A holiday post |
| April | High. Second quarter 82.4% | Passover and the holiday week. Independence Day. The city is full of families | First peak. Campaigns for the tourist who is already in town, with a radius around the hotel strip | Exact holiday hours. Fast replies on WhatsApp. Ask every guest for a review |
| May | Medium to high | Strong weekends. Lag BaOmer. Shavuot in late May or early June. The heat starts | Medium budget. Open the summer campaign and test keywords and ads | Spring photos. Check the site speed on mobile before summer |
| June | Medium. Between the holidays and the school break | The school year ends. July and August bookings close now | Start raising. An early booking campaign for summer | Summer hours and summer prices. The summer page goes live on the site now |
| July | Peak. Third quarter 87.9% | The summer school break. The beach is packed. Heavy heat, and activity moves to the morning and the evening | Peak budget. Call and WhatsApp ads. Run them in the hours you actually answer | Exact summer hours. Fresh photos. Answer every review the same day |
| August | Peak | The school break continues. The jazz festival at the end of summer | Peak budget. Protect your availability and do not sell what you do not have | Keep going like July. Start preparing the Sukkot page |
| September | Depends on the year | Back to school. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Sukkot in September or October, depending on the year | The Sukkot campaign starts now. Raised budget | Closed on Yom Kippur in the profile. Holiday hours. The Sukkot page goes live |
| October | High, then a drop. Fourth quarter 71.9% | Sukkot and the holiday week when the holiday falls in October. After the holiday the city empties out and the weather calms down | Second peak on Sukkot, then back to base budget | Holiday hours, then autumn hours. Reviews from holiday guests |
| November | Medium to low | Pleasant autumn. Sports events. The Arava enters its season. Weekends | Base budget. Residents and midweek. Prepare for Hanukkah | Content and new pages. SEO fixes. The best time to build or upgrade a website |
| December | Medium | Hanukkah. The end of the calendar year. Winter weekends | A short Hanukkah campaign. Residents | Hanukkah hours. A year end summary of what worked and a calendar for next year |
When Israelis book a vacation and what it means for your campaign
Israelis book an Eilat vacation weeks before the holiday, not on its eve. Lodging gets booked first. Decisions about attractions, restaurants and going out come in a second stage, but still before the trip starts. In the campaigns we manage, holiday searches start climbing long before the city fills up. We will not name an exact number of days here, because it differs between industries and between holidays. You can see your own business window in last year's reports from Google Ads and Search Console.
This means there are two moments to advertise, and each one gets its own campaign. The first moment is planning at home. Someone in the Tel Aviv area or in Beer Sheva searches for what to do in Eilat on Passover. They want a price, availability and photos. The second moment is when they are already on the hotel strip, searching on their phone for what is close by right now. They want a call button, navigation and opening hours. We covered how to build a Google campaign that does not burn your budget in the Google Ads for a small business guide, and we described the service itself on the Google Ads campaign management page.
One more thing about Israeli travelers. They come back. A family that visited Eilat on Sukkot will return on Passover or in summer. So every customer who arrived through a campaign is worth more than one booking. Saving details with consent, a WhatsApp list and a simple customer club turn this year's peak campaign into an audience that shows up on its own next year.
In the weak season, switch to residents
In the weak season, point your marketing at Eilat residents and weekend guests instead of chasing a tourist who is not there. About 57 thousand residents are a relatively small audience, but they are here all year, they know the businesses and they recommend them onward. Restaurants we work with, like Kissos Restaurant and Dagi Dog, see both audiences, and in winter it makes sense for the message to speak to the resident first.
The city itself works this way. The resident card gives discounts at businesses in town, and every so often the city runs campaigns like Eilat Love Back that are meant to fill midweek in the weak season. A business that joins the resident card, or offers a resident discount of its own, gets an audience that is looking for exactly that.
- A resident discount, or joining the resident card. Write it on the website and in your Google Business Profile, not just on the sign
- A Google campaign with geo targeting on people who are physically in Eilat, with resident keywords. Not a vacation in Eilat but the service itself
- Local channels. The city's Facebook groups, the local papers and the local news sites reach residents much better than a national ad
- A midweek offer. In winter the weekend is strong and midweek is weak. An offer for Sunday through Wednesday fills the hole
- Groundwork. Winter is the time to build new pages, collect reviews and fix your site SEO, because Google needs weeks to months to rank a new page. A page that goes live in June will not make it in time for summer
The Arava, Hevel Eilot and the opposite season
In the Arava the season is the opposite of Eilat. According to the Arava tourism site, the peak season in the region runs from September to May, and in summer the heat keeps hikers away. The same site counts about 350 lodging units run by about 200 entrepreneurs in the region. It is an area with many small businesses and very little content and digital marketing.
For a business in the Arava or in Hevel Eilot, this means flipping the calendar above. The strong campaign starts in autumn when the heat breaks and runs through winter. Summer is the time for groundwork and content. Holidays work here too, but the message is different. Not pool and sea but desert quiet and sky.
For an Eilat business this is an opportunity, not just a footnote. Quite a few travelers heading out to the Arava in winter pass through Eilat or finish their trip in it. An attraction, a restaurant or a shop in Eilat that speaks to the desert traveler in winter gets an audience that arrives exactly in its own weak season. You can also build a joint offer. Two days in the Arava and a night in Eilat. Two businesses in regions with opposite seasons complete each other exactly in the months each one needs.
How to split a yearly budget across the months
A marketing budget in Eilat is not split into 12 equal parts. You split it along the demand curve and shift it forward, because the advertising has to work before the customer arrives, not once they are already here. This is the method we work by.
Different businesses in Eilat build different calendars on the same skeleton. A water sports beach like Kisuski, which we work with, depends on weather and vacations, so summer and the holidays get the main weight. A business that sells show tickets, like Eilat Comedy, plans around a show schedule and not around a season. A place that serves families, like Terminal Park, lives by the school vacation calendar. Same city, three different curves.
- Step 1. Map last year. Pull from Google Ads, from Search Console reports and from your booking system which weeks the inquiries came in. That is the real demand calendar of your business, not of the city in general
- Step 2. Set three budget levels. Base for the quiet months. Raised for the months before a peak. Peak for the holidays and summer. Set the ratio between them by how many inquiries each period brought last year
- Step 3. Move the increase earlier. The raised level kicks in a few weeks before the holiday, not on it. The peak level kicks in when the city fills up and speaks to whoever is already here
- Step 4. Do not switch off in winter. A small base budget keeps conversion tracking alive, keeps the data flowing and keeps you in front of residents. A campaign that goes dark for three months comes back with no history and takes time to stabilize
- Step 5. Keep a reserve. Unusual weather, a big event added to the calendar or a competitor waking up. A small part of the yearly budget stays free for opportunities
- Step 6. Check every month. After each peak, compare what was planned to what happened and update the calendar for next year
What to update in your Google profile and website before each season
Before each season, go over your Google Business Profile and your website and update everything that changed. A tourist searching on their phone relies on what is written there. A wrong hour on a holiday eve is a customer at a locked door and a one star review. The list is short, and it is worth going through four times a year.
Freshness also helps with Google and with AI assistants. According to a test by Ahrefs, these assistants cite fresh content about 25.7% more than the matching organic result. A profile and a site that get updated before each season look alive to the machine too. We covered all the profile details for a tourism business in the article on the Google Business Profile for an Eilat business.
- Opening hours for the season, for Shabbat and for holidays, including holiday eves and closing on Yom Kippur. Set them in the profile ahead of time, not on the day itself
- Fresh photos from the current season. A beach in summer looks different from a beach in January, and whoever sees a photo from the right season understands what is waiting for them
- Seasonal prices and products. A holiday package, a summer menu or a resident deal. On the website and in the profile
- A seasonal page on the site. A Passover in Eilat or summer in Eilat page that is built early and updated every year builds up ranking instead of starting from zero
- A profile post before each holiday and a quick answer to every review. In season this is a few minutes a day
- Response time on WhatsApp and on the phone. At the peak, inquiries come in the evening and on weekends. Whoever answers within minutes closes the deal, and whoever answers tomorrow lost it
How to start working by the calendar
Start one year back, not next month. Pull last year's inquiries by week, mark the peaks on the calendar above, and see where the advertising was late and where it wasted money. The picture we see again and again is a campaign that lights up when the city is already full and a Google profile that still shows last season's hours.
If you want to go over this together, we would be happy to sit on your business data and build a yearly budget calendar from it. We are based in Eilat, we work with businesses in the city, and we see these seasons from the inside.
Sources and verification
Every figure in this article was checked against two independent sources before publishing. The numbers appear as published in the original, and their date is noted next to them. Anything we could not verify twice is not written here as fact.
- The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Monthly and quarterly occupancy data for Eilat hotels, 2024 and 2025
- The State Comptroller. A September 2025 report on how much Eilat businesses depend on tourism
- The Arava tourism site. The activity season in the region
- Ahrefs. A study on AI assistants citing fresh content
This is exactly what we do at Google Ads campaign management. If you want us to go over it together for your business, write to us.
Frequently asked questions
Summer. In the third quarter of 2024, July to September, occupancy in Eilat hotels stood at 87.9% per the CBS. After it comes the second quarter with Passover at 82.4%, then Sukkot in the fourth quarter. Winter is the weak season, with 66.4% in the first quarter.
Weeks before the holiday. Israelis book lodging early, and attractions and restaurants in a second stage, but still before they hit the road. A campaign that lights up on the holiday eve only catches whoever is already in town. You can see the exact window of your own business in last year's data in Google Ads and in Search Console reports.
Yes, but differently. A base budget that speaks to residents and weekend guests and keeps your data and your campaign history alive. Point most of the effort at groundwork. New pages, reviews and SEO fixes that will ripen by Passover.
In Google Ads, set geo targeting to people who are physically in Eilat, not people interested in Eilat. Use resident keywords, like the service name with the word Eilat, not vacation or hotel. Add local channels like the city's Facebook groups and the local papers, and offer a resident discount or join the resident card.
These are the transition months. In June you presell the summer and prepare hours, photos and pages. In September you close out the summer and open the Sukkot campaign. In both, the budget is raised but not at peak, and the work is mostly preparation.
Flip it. According to the Arava tourism site, the season in the region runs from September to May. The strong campaign starts in autumn, and summer is groundwork time. Holidays work in the Arava too, but with a message of desert and quiet, not sea.
Want us to look at this for your business?
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