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Tourist Guide Israel (TGI) is a Jerusalem-based private touring company. It was founded in 2013 by Udi Avital, who has been guiding in Israel since 2011, and it works today as a team of licensed guides, guide-drivers and tour operators sharing one way of doing things.
Every guide on our team holds a national tour guide license issued by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. Between us we guide in all commonly requested languages, including Hebrew, English and Chinese, so we can match you with a guide who speaks your language and knows your subject.
What we do is easy to say and hard to do well: we build private, fully tailor-made tours anywhere in Israel, and then we guide them ourselves. Since 2013 we have hosted hundreds of guests this way, from solo travelers to families spanning three generations.
Our signature service is the private driven tour. Your guide drives, in a vehicle licensed for touring by Israel’s ministries of tourism and transport, arranged to suit the size and needs of your party. No rental car, no parking, no navigating, no dead hours. It also means the conversation keeps going between sites, which is where a surprising amount of the understanding happens.
Inside that framework we guide several kinds of journeys. Jewish tours follow the land of the Tanach, from Abraham through the archaeology and the texts to the modern state. Christian tours walk the landscapes of Jesus’ life in Jerusalem, Nazareth and the Galilee, with an Israeli guide who can place the New Testament in its Jewish context and on its actual ground. Hiking tours take you onto Israel’s 10,000 kilometers of marked trails, matched to your pace and fitness. Accessible tours run on one principle: everybody, anywhere. A guest with a special need is not a limit on where a group can go, it is a planning question, and we have answered it many times. For travelers who prefer company, we also run open group tours to Israel’s headline sites together with partners we trust.
The less you have to coordinate, the better your trip goes, so bring us everything. Airport meet-and-greet and transfers, hotel pickups, multi-day itineraries, day trips and hikes, and the timing that ties it all together are part of the service rather than extras you assemble yourself.
Our reach goes beyond the classic circuit. Alongside Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, the Dead Sea, Masada and the Galilee, we arrange touring in Bethlehem, Jericho and Hebron, the Golan, the Negev and Eilat, and we can extend your trip across the border to Petra and Jordan or to Sinai. Where a destination or a subject calls for a specialist, we bring in trusted partner guides and operators we have worked with for years. For you it stays one plan, one point of contact and one team responsible for it. So ask. If it is part of the trip you are imagining, the answer is usually yes.
It starts with a conversation, not a catalogue. You tell us who is coming, how long you have, what matters to you and what you would rather skip. We come back with suggestions built on local knowledge and on who is actually traveling, and we plan the trip together. Then we take care of the machinery: routing, timing, the order of sites so you are not in the worst place at the worst hour, entrance arrangements, transport, and food worth stopping for.
On tour, the plan is a starting point. Because the same guide stays with you across your days, we can read the day and adjust: stay longer where something lands, drop what is not working, add a viewpoint, slow the pace, or change direction for weather or for a question worth chasing. Careful structure is exactly what makes that flexibility possible.
Practical questions about timing, payment, transfers, languages and what a touring day actually looks like are answered on our FAQ page, and anything not covered there we are happy to answer directly.
We think guiding starts with listening. Reciting dates at a wall is easy. The work is understanding why this particular person came to this particular country, and then building days that answer it.
We guide with respect: for the sites, for the communities living around them, and for the fact that our guests arrive with very different beliefs and family histories. Israel is small, dense and complicated, and we would rather show you that honestly than flatten it into a slogan. We also think a tour should be a pleasure. Good food, good photos, laughing in the car and time to simply sit and look at something are not distractions from the experience, they are the experience.
I am Udi Avital, founder of Tourist Guide Israel. One thing I want to state plainly: I am personally responsible for the standards and the quality of every tour that goes out under the TGI name, whether I am guiding it that day or one of our guides or partners is. That covers who I bring onto the team, how tours are planned, how our vehicles are kept, how accessibility is handled, and how we respond when something needs fixing. The mindset above is shared by the whole team. The accountability for it is mine. If you want to know where it comes from, my own page tells that story: Jerusalem, a few good years in Dublin, a Yad Ben Zvi specialization in Christianity and Bible guiding, a lifetime of hiking, and a family obsession with feeding people properly.
“Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth” (Proverbs 27:2), so we will keep this short. Our guests write about the same handful of things: one dedicated guide who knows them and their itinerary across the whole trip, communication that is clear before they land and while they are here, planning solid enough that the day runs as designed, and the feeling of touring with a local friend who happens to be a professional. You can read them yourself on TripAdvisor, Google, Facebook and Trustpilot, gathered on our reviews page.
Be a tourist in your own country. We guide Israeli families, groups and companies too, in Hebrew, on day trips and hikes across the country. If Hebrew is your language, start here, where the Israeli side of our service lives.