In order to make sure that all visitors of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv are accommodated, the city of Tel Aviv together with the organizers planned a construction of a tent-city in Tel Aviv. Due to no interest in the tender which was published earlier, these plans have now been cancelled.

The Tel Aviv Municipality stated the following:

The Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa is working hard to create an extraordinary experience for the tourists who will arrive in Tel Aviv for Eurovision. Unfortunately, the tent city initiative did not succeed because of the lack of responses to the tender. We are now working on other solutions which will make it easier for tourists to enjoy the activities and events the city will be offering.

Some of the requirements of the tender were a turnover of the bidder to be at least 2 million Shekels a year; producing and organizing three or more ongoing events for over 1000 people, or having an accommodation site for at least 300 people per night.

However, on a positive note, there are still lots of available rooms in hotels and hostels in Tel Aviv for the visitors who haven’t yet sorted out their accommodation for their Eurovision visit. The former Director of the Israel Hotel Association, Mr. Shmuel Zural stated the following:

In the past, there was no event in which Tel Aviv would have been unable to provide necessary amount of rooms. This time there will also be no one who will not be able to get to Tel Aviv because of that reason, but there was such hysteria that there were even talks about having ships becoming floating hotels. There was a clear interest to create impression of the lack of accommodation, which then resulted in raising the prices. But the truth will become clear shortly when the reservation period will end and people will have to pay for their stay, then they will start releasing reserved rooms in numbers.