■ A COUPLE of weeks back, there was an item in this column about actress Dora Segal’s donating her hair to cancer patients who had lost their own. For her, it was a means of coping with the death of her son who had died of cancer.Different people have different ways of coping with bereavement. For instance, next month Yehudit and Yossi Sela, who live in Koranit in the Galilee, plan to go horseback riding in Mongolia. It’s not something they’ve been hankering to do all their lives, but it’s a way of paying tribute to the memory of their son Ben who, at age 25, fell in battle in the Second Lebanon War.On the day following the anniversary of his death, the parents, after visiting his grave, will fly to Mongolia to recreate Ben’s extraordinary journey on horseback.A born adventurer, on completion of his compulsory military service Ben traveled to many parts of the world. He didn’t do the usual tourist things but always sought something unique and far-reaching. Mongolia was the last place he visited before coming home to fight in the war.To follow in Ben’s footsteps, his parents had to learn to ride a horse – something that is not so easy for middle-aged people. They started taking riding lessons two months ago and are now quite comfortable in the saddle.■ AS UNPOPULAR as he may be with social-justice activists, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai is extremely popular with people in the tourist industry, particularly members of the Israel and Tel Aviv hotel associations. Last week at a reception at the Dan Hotel, Tel Aviv, they paid tribute to the city’s chefs and restaurateurs who have done so much to put Tel Aviv on the international tourist and gastronomic map to the extent that major international tourist organizations and associations consistently name Tel Aviv as one of the top destinations in any number of categories.In a 2011 survey by GayCities.com and American Airlines, Tel Aviv was voted the world’s best destination for the gay tourist and was way ahead of runnersup New York, Toronto, Sao Paulo, Madrid, London and New Orleans.Huldai said that when he entered office in 1998, he reached out to the gay community for humanitarian reasons. “It was a human rights issue,” he said.Israel Hotel Association president Ami Federmann said that although Huldai had not done anything for the IHA, “what he did for Tel Aviv was more than enough.”Obviously, the British luxury magazine Monocle, which subsequently named Huldai as one of Ten Smart Mayors for making Tel Aviv a magnet for young hitech entrepreneurs, shares the opinion of the IHA. “There are currently 6,500 hotel rooms in Tel Aviv, with an average yearly occupancy of 75 percent,” said Federmann. He added that altogether, the city hosts some five million overnight visitors a year, half of them foreign tourists. On any given day, he said, there are at least 15,000 visitors in the city.Throughout the year, the total expenditure by visitors for accommodation, food, leisure and pleasure is in the range of NIS 1 billion, said Federmann.Hotel rooms are so hard to come by in Tel Aviv, said Tourism Minister Stas Meseznikov, that when he recently hosted a minister from one of the European countries, there was no hotel room available for him in Tel Aviv so he had to stay in the residence of his country’s ambassador.■ MEANWHILE, GREEN Party representative on the Herzliya Municipal Council Dror Ezra is opposing a plan to expand the Dan Accadia Herzliya Hotel to five times its present size. If the plan goes ahead, it will not only encroach on public space but will also be dangerously close to the beachfront. Ezra contends that water from the sea seeping into the foundations will eventually cause them to disintegrate. The same holds true for hotels being planned for the Netanya, Hadera, Michmoret and Caesarea beachfronts, he asserts.■ BRITISH FASHIONISTAS Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, who are best known for their long-running BBC series What Not to Wear, travel the world advising women on how to dress. They were in Israel last year and were back again last week with a television crew to film footage of the Haifa Grand Canyon shopping mall, where they visited various stores such as H&M, Superpharm and Zara.The garments that Woodall selected at Zara became instant best-sellers.Women who were in the store at the time and eagerly followed her choices subsequently purchased the same style items. Admittedly, the Zara collections are made in Spain and not in Israel, but what Woodall and Constantine are doing with their show is another form of public diplomacy, which is arguably much more subtle than any political approach.
