ORLANDO, Fla. — Most Jews around the world say the traditional “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of the annual Passover Seder feast. Last year, St. Louis native David Benkof said to himself, “Next year in Disney World.”
For many Jews like Benkof, traveling to vacation hotspots during the eight-day Passover holiday, which started at sunset Friday, has become a way of avoiding the hassle of heeding religious rules that require scrubbing a home clean of grain particles or hosting back-to-back, hours-long dinners at their homes for dozens of relatives and friends.
Passover vacations have grown in recent years beyond the traditional destinations of Miami Beach, the Catskills and Israel. They now include scores of resorts in Orlando, Florida; Scottsdale, Arizona; Riviera Maya in Mexico; Whistler, Canada; Sardinia, Italy; the island of Crete in Greece; San Diego; and Puerto Rico, as well as a fully-kosher South African safari.
“We’ve seen a massive growth over the last decade to 12 years of the locations, the variety, the price ranges, the types of hotels,” said Raphi Bloom, who runs Totally Jewish Travel, a travel website.
Bloom estimates that up to 50,000 hotel rooms for as many as 100,000 people are booked this year for Passover, which starts at sundown Friday. That represents about $60 million to $70 million in revenue, double the amount from a decade ago, he said.
Passover travel programs at the resorts, which include Ritz-Carlton and Waldorf Astoria hotels in Florida, are accommodating the celebrants with kids’ camps, casino nights, Hawaiian luaus, daily barbecues, lectures by rabbinic scholars and meals that follow kosher dietary rules of separating milk from meat and prohibiting pork and shellfish, along with Passover prohibitions against bread.
“People are more willing to not have the traditional Passover at home and actually go away, with the ability to make hotel kitchens kosher, source food locally that is kosher,” said Bloom, who is based in Manchester, England. “I think in more and more families both the husband and the wife work. When you go away for Passover … there’s no cleaning, preparing, cooking.”
Benkof spent the last few days of Passover last year at the Doubletree by Hilton Orlando at SeaWorld, but he missed the first two nights when Jews have the traditional Seder meal. He plans to arrive in time for the Seder dinners this year. Food was a selling point: Some Passover food can be dry and flavorless but the resort served delicious meals.
Depending on the hotel and destination, prices for Passover vacation packages range from $1,600 to $11,000 per person, and typically cover lodging, unlimited food and entertainment.