A Website for a Tourism Business in Eilat: 9 Things It Must Have
A website for a tourism business in Eilat has to work first of all for a tourist holding a phone on the hotel strip and deciding right now. That means a page that loads fast on a cellular network. A call or WhatsApp button at thumb height. Navigation in one tap. Clear price and availability. Light photos and hours that match the season. Around that you add English based on the reality of 2026, a connection to the Google Business Profile, accessibility and measurement. Here are all nine things in order of priority, with the sources.
The nine things in one table
The list is ordered by what brings in a customer today, not by what sounds impressive. Six of the things must be on the site the day it goes live. Three depend on a reality that keeps changing, and you add them when the data justifies it. You can take this table as is to a meeting with whoever is building your site, in WordPress or in code.
| What | Why it matters in Eilat | When |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile speed | The tourist browses on a phone over a cellular network at the beach and in the hotel. Google ranks by the mobile version | On launch day |
| Call, WhatsApp and navigation in one tap | Someone already in town wants to talk or get there. Not to read | On launch day |
| Price, availability and booking | The Israeli books ahead from home. Without a price they move on to a competitor | On launch day |
| Light photos and video | Heavy sea photos are the number one reason for a slow site in this town | On launch day |
| Hours and seasonal info that is easy to update | Summer, winter, holiday and Shabbat hours change. A wrong hour is a customer standing at a closed door | On launch day |
| Connection to the Google Business Profile | The same details on the site and on the profile. A booking link from the profile to the site | On launch day |
| Full English | English speaking Israelis, tourism workers and the foreign tourist when they come back | In the first months |
| Accessibility and an accessibility statement | A legal requirement for most businesses and good service for an older guest | In the first months |
| Russian and more languages | Only when international flights return and the site data shows an audience | When the data says so |
Who the site works for: a tourist at a hotel, an Israeli planning ahead and a local
The site works for three different people, and only one of them is sitting at a computer. The first is the tourist who is already in Eilat. They are standing on the boardwalk or lying by the pool, searching on a phone, and they want an answer within seconds. The second is the Israeli planning a vacation from home. They compare prices, read reviews and want to book ahead. The third is the local who lives here all year and is looking for a service close to home. Eilat has about 57 thousand residents according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), and most guests arrive from the center of the country by road. We gathered the rest of the numbers on the Eilat tourism numbers page.
These three people land on the same homepage, so it has to answer all of them without confusing anyone. At the top, a short answer for the person already in town. What there is, how much it costs, when it is open and how to get there. Below that, the details for the planner. And everywhere, one clear action. A call, a message or a booking.
Google looks at the site exactly like the tourist does. According to Google's documentation it crawls and ranks sites by their mobile version, and since October 2023 that applies to all sites. A page that looks good on a computer and breaks on a phone loses both with the tourist and in the rankings.
Speed on mobile and on a cellular network
The page needs to show its main content within 2.5 seconds, even on a cellular network at the beach. That is not a number we made up. Google defines three browsing experience metrics (Core Web Vitals) and sets thresholds for them. Load time of the largest element on the page (Largest Contentful Paint) up to 2.5 seconds. Response to a tap (Interaction to Next Paint) up to 200 milliseconds. Page stability while loading (Cumulative Layout Shift) up to 0.1. Measurement is done at the 75th percentile of visits, on mobile and on desktop separately. That is what Google's web.dev site says, and the Google Search Central documentation adds that these metrics align with what the ranking systems reward.
You check this in two minutes with PageSpeed Insights and the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. What slows sites down in Eilat repeats itself. Sea photos weighing several megabytes. A Hebrew font loaded from a remote server. Dozens of scripts from plugins and chat widgets. And a distant server that adds time to every request. We wrote about the difference between WordPress and a coded site on exactly this point in WordPress or a coded site. Both ways can meet the threshold. The question is who takes care of it.
Languages: what you really need in 2026
Full Hebrew and good English now. Russian and more languages only when the data shows the audience from abroad is back. That is the conclusion from the numbers, not from habit. According to the Hebrew Wikipedia there have been no international flights at Ramon Airport since October 2023, and according to the flightconnections site, updated on 2.8.2026, flights from Ramon go to Tel Aviv and Haifa only, with no international flights. Wizz Air's plan to open a Ramon to Budapest route in March 2026 had not happened as of the time of writing. According to ch-aviation from 29.4.2026 the airline was not flying to Israel at all in that period, and according to TheMarker from 6.5.2026 it postponed its return to Ben Gurion Airport once again.
At the national level too, inbound tourism is small. According to the CBS about 1.3 million tourists entered Israel in 2025, and the Ministry of Tourism reported a similar number. The three biggest sources were the United States, France and the United Kingdom, with Russia after them. So English is the second language even for a business aiming abroad. Russian is relevant for the local audience. According to the CBS local authority profile for 2023, 23.1% of Eilat residents are immigrants who arrived in 1990 or later. A business that serves residents and tourism workers can justify a Russian page even today. A business that serves tourists should wait for the flights.
If you add a language, do it right or not at all. Google explains in Search Central that every language needs its own URL. That you should not redirect automatically based on browser language. And that the hreflang tags marking the versions must be reciprocal. If page A points to page B, page B must also point back to page A, otherwise Google may ignore them. Google also stresses that it detects the page language from the visible content, not from the tags. An English page with half the menu in Hebrew does not count as an English page. And how do you know when to add a language? The audience details report in Google Analytics has a browser language row for every user. When you see a consistent rise in Russian or German there, that is the time.
Booking, calling, WhatsApp and navigation
Every page needs three actions in one tap. Call. Message on WhatsApp. And navigate. A business that sells spots also needs booking and payment without a phone call. The tourist in town does not fill out forms and does not look up an address on Google by themselves. They tap whatever sits under their thumb. So these actions live in a fixed bar at the bottom of the screen on mobile, not only on the contact page.
The Israeli planning from home needs something else. Price and availability on the page itself. Whoever hides the price behind a form loses the person comparing three open tabs. A water sports beach like Kisuski Water Sports, which we work with, lives exactly in that tension. A guest by the pool books for an hour from now, and a family from the center of the country books for the summer vacation, and both need to see the same open spots. How to choose between a platform, off the shelf software and a custom system is covered in A booking system for an attraction or water sports.
- Call: a phone link that opens the dialer, not a written number that has to be copied
- WhatsApp: a wa.me link with the number in international format, no leading zeros, and a prefilled message. According to the WhatsApp help center you can add encoded opening text to the link
- Navigation: one link to Google Maps and one to Waze. According to Google's documentation a Maps link in the standard format opens the app if it is installed and otherwise the browser, and a Waze link behaves the same way
- Booking: price, availability and payment on the page. If there is no booking system yet, at least a price range and opening hours next to the button
- Response: whoever answers on WhatsApp within minutes closes the deal. The button is worth nothing if no one answers in the evening and on Shabbat in season
Sea photos and video without killing the site
Sea photos are the number one reason for a slow site in Eilat, and you can solve it without giving them up. A photo straight out of the camera or the phone weighs several megabytes and gets pushed onto the homepage as is. On a cellular network at the beach that is seconds of blank screen. The fix is format and size, not giving up the photo.
Format. According to Google's documentation, WebP images are about 25% to 34% smaller than JPEG images at similar quality, and Mozilla's MDN gives an almost identical range. The AVIF format is even smaller but needs a fallback for older browsers. Size. Serve the phone an image at phone width, not the file meant for the big screen. Loading order. Images below the fold load only when you scroll to them, but the main image of the page never does. Google's web.dev writes explicitly that lazy loading the largest image on the page always hurts the loading metric.
Video. A clip of the beach sells well, but not as a background that plays on its own when you arrive on mobile. Put up a light poster image and a play button, or embed the clip from a video platform so it loads only on click. On a coded site these conversions happen automatically. In WordPress you do them with a plugin and compression up front. Either way, someone needs to check it after every new gallery upload.
Seasonal hours and info that changes with the season
Everything that changes with the season must be updatable in minutes and identical on the site and on the Google Business Profile. Summer and winter hours. Shabbat and holidays. Yom Kippur eve. Activity that stops in the wind. Restaurants we work with, like Kissos Restaurant and Dagi Dog, change hours and menu between the seasons, and every such change needs to reach the site the same day.
The Google Business Profile has a dedicated tool for this. According to Google's help center you set special hours for holidays and events when the business changes hours or closes for up to six days in a row. A closure of seven days or more is marked as temporarily closed. On the site itself the hours should sit in one place that feeds all the pages, not be printed separately at the bottom of every page. That way you update once.
- Hours by season, Shabbat and holidays in one place on the site and on the Google profile
- A weather cancellation policy written on the booking page. Wind in Eilat is not a surprise
- A permanent seasonal page. Passover in Eilat or Summer in Eilat that gets updated every year instead of being built from scratch
- Menu, price list and packages as text files that can be edited, not as an image that has to be redesigned
- A visible update date next to the info that changes. The tourist and Google see that the page is alive
Connecting the Google profile, accessibility and measurement
The site and the Google Business Profile need to tell the same story. Same name, same address, same phone, same hours. From the profile you add a link to the site and booking links. According to Google's help center you can add links to the profile for booking an appointment, reserving a place and the menu, and mark one link as preferred. On the site you add structured data of the local business type (LocalBusiness). According to Google's documentation and schema.org you include name and address as required fields, and it is recommended to add opening hours, phone, the site address and coordinates. Everything about a profile for a tourism business in town is in Google Business Profile for a business in Eilat.
Accessibility is a requirement, not an extra. The Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities regulations require a site that provides a service to meet Israeli Standard 5568 at level AA and to publish an accessibility statement in a prominent place. According to the text of the regulations and the Israel Internet Association, the full exemption applies only to very small businesses under a turnover test of up to 100 thousand shekels on an annual average. Most tourism businesses in town are not there. And beyond the law, an older guest with weak eyesight is a paying customer.
And you measure. Without measurement you do not know if the site works or just exists. In Google Analytics you define events for a call tap, a WhatsApp tap, navigation and booking. You check which city and which browser language visitors come from. And once a month you look at the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. Those are four numbers that tell you whether the tourist in town actually reaches you. How we build a site like this from day one is laid out on the Website building page.
Sources and verification
Every figure in this article was checked against two independent sources before publication. The numbers are given as published in the original source, and their date is noted next to them.
- Google's web.dev, the Web Vitals article. The Core Web Vitals thresholds: LCP up to 2.5 seconds, INP up to 200 milliseconds, CLS up to 0.1, measured at the 75th percentile
- Google Search Central, the Core Web Vitals guide. The same thresholds and the sentence about alignment with what the ranking systems reward
- Google Search Central, the mobile-first indexing guide and the blog post from October 2023. Google crawls and ranks by the mobile version
- Google Search Central, the localized versions guide and the managing multi-regional sites guide. The hreflang rules, reciprocity, a URL for every language, no automatic redirects and language detection from the content
- The Hebrew Wikipedia, the Ramon Airport entry. No international flights since October 2023
- flightconnections.com, the flights from Eilat Ramon page, updated 2.8.2026. Direct destinations Tel Aviv and Haifa only, no international flights
- ch-aviation 29.4.2026 and TheMarker 6.5.2026. Wizz Air was not flying to Israel in that period and postponed its return. The Budapest Ramon route did not open
- The Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), press release 6.1.2026, visitor entries to Israel in 2025. About 1.32 million tourist entries, with the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Russia as the main sources
- Srugim 31.12.2025, the Ministry of Tourism summary for 2025. About 1.3 million tourists and the same order of countries
- The CBS local authorities profile, Eilat 2023 and 2021. 57,339 residents and 23.1% immigrants from 1990 onward in 2023, compared with 22.8% in 2021
- The Google Business Profile help center. Special hours for up to six days and temporarily closed from seven days. Adding booking and menu links and marking a preferred link
- The WhatsApp help center, the click to chat page. The wa.me link format and a prefilled message
- The Google Maps URLs documentation and the Waze deep links documentation. Standard navigation links that open the app or the browser
- developers.google.com, the WebP page, and the MDN image formats guide. WebP is about 25% to 34% smaller than JPEG, and AVIF is smaller with a need for a fallback
- web.dev, the Optimize LCP article. Do not lazy load the largest image on the page
- Google Search Central, the LocalBusiness structured data guide, and schema.org. Required and recommended fields
- The Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities (Service Accessibility Adjustments) regulations on the Nevo site and the Israel Internet Association guide. Standard 5568 level AA, the accessibility statement and the turnover tests for the exemption
- The Google Analytics help center, the Demographic details report. Browser language and location of the users
This is exactly what we do at Website building. If you want us to go over it together for your business, write to us.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Even when there are almost no tourists from abroad, there are Israelis who are more comfortable in English, tourism workers from abroad and individual visitors who arrive through Tel Aviv. Full English at a separate URL with reciprocal hreflang is the second language. Not machine translation of half a page.
It depends who you sell to. According to the CBS, 23.1% of Eilat residents are immigrants who arrived in 1990 or later, so a business that serves residents and tourism workers can justify a Russian page. A business that serves tourists waits for international flights to return to Ramon and checks the Analytics reports for an audience.
Two right now. Hebrew and English. Every extra language is pages you have to maintain, with hours and prices to update in them every season. Add a language only when the data shows an audience that justifies the upkeep.
If you sell spots in time. A table, a diving lesson, park entry or a night at a villa. Then yes, because the Israeli books ahead and does not want to wait for a call. If you sell a service without limited availability, a clear price and a WhatsApp button that gets answered fast are enough.
A business with one service and a clear price can start with a landing page that does the three actions. Call, WhatsApp and navigation. A business with several services, languages or bookings needs a website with a page for every service, because each such page ranks on Google separately.
The price is set by the number of pages, the languages and the booking system, not by the technology alone. We laid out the ranges and what is included at each level, including the yearly costs, in the article on how much a website costs for a business in Eilat.
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