How the sister cities program promotes tourism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the extent to which the Sister Cities program affects local tourism in Israel. We split sister cities’ coupling methods into four categories according to the populations of the foreign and local cities and found that the most beneficial coupling method, in terms of the number of tourists and the length of time they spend in Israel, was the same sizes method (Big-Big and Small-Small), with an emphasis on Big-Big, which was found to be the best coupling method. The findings show that culture, religion and common ideology have an important influence on tourism.