After two years of sparse crowds at Times Square and other popular attractions, New York City is finally hoping for a solid uptick in visitors this year. But the city will still miss a key driver of its prepandemic tourism boom: big spenders from China, whose government has yet to allow travel abroad.
Before the pandemic, China was the fastest growing source of foreign visitors to the city, with more than 1.1 million Chinese tourists arriving in 2019. Their impact on New York’s economy was huge because they tended to stay longer and spend more than other tourists.
With US borders fully reopened to visitors for the first spring since 2019, city officials are counting on tourists from countries like Mexico, Brazil and Australia to catch up with the absent Chinese — at least temporarily.
In a forecast released Wednesday, NYC & Company, the city’s tourism promotion agency, expects a 70 percent increase in tourist numbers this year from last year to 56.4 million visitors, including 8 million from outside the United States.
That total would still be well below the 66.6 million visitors NYC & Company estimated for 2019. But it would move the city closer to Mayor Eric Adams’ goal of fully recovering from tourism by 2024.
Tourism is a vital cog in the city’s economy, supporting more than 300,000 jobs in hotels, restaurants, museums and theaters. And international travelers have the biggest impact because they spend on average more than three times as much as the typical domestic tourist.
Visitors, including those who traveled at least 50 miles but did not stay overnight, spent about $24 billion in the city last year, NYC & Company estimates. That was about half less than in 2019, but more than 50 percent more than in 2020.
“It has always been and still is that travel and tourism are the most important cornerstones of our economy,” said Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor.
Ensuring the fruits of a tourism revival are spread throughout the city, not just Manhattan, she said, was a central goal of the Adams administration’s blueprint for economic recovery.
“We’re seeing some green shoots of a tourism recovery,” said Fred Dixon, the CEO of NYC & Company. “We’re working to make sure those green shoots turn into a full recovery.”
One cause for optimism, Mr Dixon noted, has been an uptick in hotel occupancy in recent weeks as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus faded. Three-quarters of the city’s available hotel rooms were filled in the week ending March 19, according to STR, an industry research firm. That was still below the prepandemic level of 87 percent, but much higher than in the first two months of the year when Omicron kept many visitors away.
To boost demand, Mr. Adams gave NYC & Company an additional $10 million to spend on the promotional campaign it launched last year, themed “It’s New York City Time.” That was the first increase in the city’s allocation of city funds to the agency in several years.
Former mayor, Bill de Blasio, funneled $30 million in federal pandemic aid to the tourism board last summer in hopes of encouraging a rapid return of visitors. The city hosted free concerts and movies around the five boroughs to celebrate the comeback. But new strains of the virus, first Delta and then Omicron, undermined those efforts and the year ended bleak.
For all of 2021, the city received just 32.9 million visitors, less than half of the record total for 2019. With the country’s borders closed for the first 10 months of last year, only 8 percent of those visitors came from other countries, compared to 20 percent. before the pandemic.
NYC & Company predicts a tripling of international visitors this year. But that forecast includes 438,000 visitors from China, assuming that country will end its Covid lockdowns and allow its citizens to travel again.
“We recognize that there are downside risks to the current forecast and potentially room for a downward revision this summer,” warned Emina Cardamone, director of Tourism Economics, the company that produced that forecast.
Dixon admitted that predicting when Chinese tourists would return involved a lot of speculation. But he added that most foreign tourists would come from Canada and Europe, where pent-up travel demand is believed to be high and where NYC & Company has revitalized its marketing teams.
The agency had representatives around the world before shutting down the city in March 2020. But as the pandemic continued, Mr. Dixon had to shut down those operations he had built up over a decade.
In recent months, NYC & Company has gradually reopened those offices — excluding China and Singapore — to signal that New York is ready to welcome tourists again. This week, the agency entered into a new partnership with a promotion company in Japan.
mr. Adams is easing many restrictions to accelerate the city’s recovery.
“We had to rebuild confidence in New York,” said Mr. Dixon. “One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is showing travelers that the New York they know and love is here, and that Broadway and the restaurants are back.”
The city still has a long way to go to full recovery. About 115 of the hotels have not reopened, including the 1,025-room Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, and about a quarter of unionized hotel workers remain fired. Overall employment in the leisure and hospitality sectors, including hotels, restaurants, museums and theaters, has still fallen by about 100,000 jobs since pre-pandemic.
“We’re definitely in better shape than last year, but we certainly can’t say we’ve recovered,” said Vijay Dandapani, the director of the Hotel Association of New York City. “The continued loss of the past two years is money down the drain.”
As part of its campaign, NYC & Company plans to promote each of the five boroughs to tourists.
Some attractions outside Manhattan, such as the Universal Hip Hop Museum exhibit at the Bronx Terminal Market, are still in recovery mode. The museum, whose permanent location is expected to open in 2024, closed its South Bronx Market exhibit in December as Omicron toured the city.
Now it’s preparing to open a new exhibit there, focusing on the early days of hip-hop in the late 1980s, including costumes and other memorabilia from artists like LL Cool J and Run-DMC, said Rocky Bucano, the executive director of the museum.
“We get people from all corners of the world, although it is unfortunate that some countries still have certain travel restrictions,” said Mr Bucano. “We expect large crowds when we reopen in May.”
The plan to launch the Brooklyn boroughs campaign has been welcomed by cultural institutions. “This is music to my ears, because historically, the vast majority of tourist dollars have gone to Manhattan,” said Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum.
Ms. Pasternak said crowds flocked to the museum’s recent exhibitions, including one that showcases Christian Dior fashion. “Brooklyn has always been back because we never left,” she said.
