Before the war with Iran broke out more than four weeks ago, David was looking forward to bringing his extended family of 14 people from London to spend the Passover holiday in Israel.

When foreign air carriers stopped flying to Israel for security reasons, however, he had to cancel everything and look for other options.

“We were able to resolve payment with the first place, so we looked around and booked a Passover program at a hotel in Europe,” said David, who asked that his last name be withheld for his privacy. “But then that one got canceled as well, probably because the Israelis who were signed up couldn’t make it. Eventually, we signed up for a different program that is much more expensive.”

Rearranging his family vacation was a minor inconvenience compared to the suffering others face during this war, David acknowledged, but the saga had been fraught with stress and frustration.

“I can’t say I’m happy about this, but it’s been a difficult time for Jews everywhere,” he said. “I just hope it’s all worth it.”

This year, flight cancellations to and from Israel by El Al and other carriers have disrupted Passover plans for hundreds of thousands who were planning to travel for the holiday, one of Israel’s busiest travel seasons.

What was looking to be a banner year for the burgeoning luxury Passover program industry has been “tragic,” with numerous programs canceled and others scrambling to replace guests unable to attend, according to Raphi Bloom, head of the Totally Jewish Travel website.

Bloom, who co-founded the site in 1999, has watched the demand for hotel Pesach programs explode over the past several decades, from a niche market serving only the wealthiest Orthodox Jews to a global phenomenon catering to people across the Jewish spectrum. His site listed about 130 different programs around the world this year, about 10 percent of them in Israel.

“We watched how organizers navigated COVID, when the world shut down two weeks before Passover in 2020, and how the sector came back to life after the pandemic,” Bloom said. “The Gaza war that started after October 7, 2023, hurt Israeli programs for the last two years, but people were finally starting to come back this year. This war with Iran has snatched that all away.”

Programs in Israel that cater to foreign Jews and overseas programs that target Israelis have been the worst affected by the war’s uncertainty. That’s a fair chunk of the estimated 35,000 people who now attend Passover programs at hotels around the world, Bloom said.

As the appetite for Passover programs has grown, competition has become fierce. Price tags for these programs are hefty, ranging from $2,500 to more than $15,000 per person for the eight-day holiday, and organizers pull out all the stops to create to-die-for........

© The Times of Israel