tourism in nyc statistics

Annual Report 2023

New York City Tourism + Conventions is the official destination marketing organization and convention and visitors bureau for the five boroughs of New York City. Our mission is to invite the world and energize the City, building equitable, sustainable economic prosperity and community through tourism for the mutual benefit of residents, businesses and visitors.

Letter from OUR Chairman and CEO

Welcome to our 2023 Annual Report.  The story of New York City tourism is one of resilience and tenacity. This report is a record of the creative energy, relentless determination and innovative collaborations that are, once again, returning the tourism and convention industry to reliable growth in visitation, spending, jobs and economic impact.   The numbers bear out the story. Last year saw robust growth in visitor volume, up almost 10 percent from 2022. The forecast for 2024 calls for moderate but healthy growth at 4 percent. Looking further out, indicators point to consumers continuing to prioritize travel spending giving confidence to our projection that 2025 visitation is likely to exceed 68 million for the first time, almost 2 million more than our prior record.  Challenges to this level of growth remain and must be continually monitored and addressed. Ongoing economic pressures, geopolitical tensions and competing destinations factor strongly, but also perceptions of safety and shrinking city contract funds strain resources and reduce marketing reach. As we continue to navigate these challenges and the road to full tourism recovery, we are guided by our strategic priorities and an enduring commitment to celebrating the rich diversity of the five boroughs as the greatest destination in the world. One of our greatest advantages is the partnership with you, our members and stakeholders. It is your investment that fuels our programming and enriches our content. It is our promise to continue delivering a robust suite of benefits, insights and sales opportunities to grow your business as your one-stop shop for maximizing tourism impact. As we look to the exciting year ahead and major events like America250 and FIFA World Cup 26, we are more grateful than ever for your engagement and support. Charles Flateman Chairman New York City Tourism + Conventions ‍ Executive Vice President The Shubert Organization Fred Dixon President and CEO New York City Tourism + Conventions

Pathing recovery: 2023 data

New York City’s tourism and convention industry performance was marked by steady recovery patterns across all sectors—day and overnight, domestic and international, as well as leisure and business travel.

Travel Performance 2019–2023

Strong fundamentals sustain travel to New York City in 2023 and lay the groundwork for continued growth.

By the end of 2023, overall visitation had reached 93% of 2019 benchmark levels. Monthly visitor trends returned to typical seasonal patterns, rising from the winter doldrums of January, warming up in spring and summer, and then taking off with the return to school, work and shoulder-season travel from September through December 31. The final numbers for 2023 reached 62.2 million visitors—11.6 million international and 50.6 domestic. This was a 9.6% increase over 2022 levels, driven by the strong return of international travel (up 23%). The domestic day-trip market was a key driver of success at 24.6 million, while overnight reached 25.9 million.

Travel Benchmarks 2021–2023

The City and the travel industry have moved past the worst effects of the pandemic. Despite tremendous progress, full recovery is just out of reach.

Over the past three years, we have witnessed key market segments pacing at different rates. First to recover was the domestic market accounting for the largest share of visitors and reaching 95% of 2019 benchmark levels. This activity was supported in each of the past three years by the leisure travel market pulled back into the City by the dynamic activity in places to dine, shop, eat, explore and stay. International travel has seen mixed results across the more than 20 origin markets that keep New York City the largest international destination in the US. The rapid recovery rates each year since 2020 have brought the international market back to 86% of benchmark. The business travel market, typically accounting for over 20% of the market, is also continuing to pull back up to 2019 levels.

International Visitation

With the most global mix of international markets, New York City is pacing back to record levels of visitation.

Looking at the top 10 inbound markets provided solid evidence of how international travelers are drawn to New York City. Between 2022 and 2023, visitation saw increases across all world regions. Canada and Mexico together grew by 42% year over year, reaching 98% of pre-pandemic levels. The overseas markets continued to grow, up 21% compared to last year and reaching 86% of overall benchmark levels. The UK remains in top position with more than 1 million visitors. European markets including France, Italy, Germany and Spain benefited from regular and direct air routes into our three international airports bringing in over 2.3 million visitors combined. The Asia-Pacific region highlighted Australia and China staying in the top tier. From Latin America, Brazil remained the most dynamic source market.

Hotel Performance

Overnight visitors to New York City are driving strong hotel room demand and high room rates.

Hotel performance continues to improve each year since the 2020 pandemic disruptions. Domestic leisure visitation has recovered most quickly across all five boroughs and classes of hotel service. Transient and group business events began to push demand and rates up during the spring and fall activity periods. Overall performance, however, reflects the slower recovery of longer staying international travelers from APAC and LATAM regions. Visitor accommodations in hotels averaged over 120,000 rooms in active inventory throughout the year (rooms used for shelter/emergency uses are not included in these calculations). By year-end, room nights sold (demand) had reached 36.1 million, a 7% year-over-year increase. Citywide occupancy rates averaged 81.6%, 10% above 2022, but still below 2019 record levels. Following national trends, the average daily rate (ADR) pulled ahead of pre-pandemic levels and continued the year-over-year increases.

Marketing Strategies

Through innovative branding strategies and an unwavering commitment to showcasing NYC’s dynamism and diversity, we promoted the five boroughs as the world’s most aspirational and welcoming destination.

Reenergizing Our Brand for a New Era

As of March 2023, we are New York City Tourism + Conventions. The introduction of our new name and brand system marks a significant moment for our organization. With our new brand, we aim to capture the essence of New York City in its entirety: an ever-expansive destination that offers diverse and authentic experiences that enrich the traveler and benefit all New Yorkers. This shift strategically positions us to continue leading the City’s nearly $65 billion tourism economy. It makes clear our purpose and mission as the official tourism organization for one of the world’s greatest destinations—our commitment to New York City has never been greater.

We launched digital media campaigns to help build awareness of our new name and branding. We also created a new welcome video to drive leisure visitation along with a new video targeted at business event planners, which features those planners describing why NYC is the ideal destination to host events. The videos capture the essence of “What’s Good in NYC” and have been well received in our events and speaking engagements.

The new NYCtourism.com website debuted in June with a refreshed look, bringing the new brand fully to life and providing a more intuitive experience for users, while still housing all the information visitors and our business audiences need to experience the best of the five boroughs. To spread awareness of the new site, we deployed out-of-home media (printed and digital bus shelters and LinkNYC screens) targeting locals and in-market visitors as well as a digital campaign (activating social media, account-based marketing, native display and outstream video) to reach B2B audiences to boost membership growth, convention and event bookings, tourism development inquiries and newsletter sign-ups.

Leveraging Our Complete Marketing Ecosystem

Our teams work constantly to inspire and inform potential visitors about the unique appeal of NYC as a destination. Our marketing ecosystem, anchored by our new website, serves as the central hub for travelers, locals and businesses seeking to explore the vibrant offerings of New York City. Our website emphasizes a user-centric approach, leveraging partnerships with leading travel marketing platforms and enhancing engagement with tools like QR codes, itineraries, video and other immersive content. Our email marketing program prioritizes subscriber engagement, sharing tailored messages for our various audiences. Our social media presence includes multiple platforms: Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, WeChat and Weibo for leisure travelers and LinkedIn for business audiences. NYC Tourism + Conventions also makes use of our substantial out-of-home media inventory through JCDecaux and Intersection to advertise vibrancy programs, amplify content and promote our partnerships.

Promoting the Breadth of Experiences Only Found in NYC

Content shared through our channels reinforces our commitment to celebrating New York City’s richness and diversity, ensuring a compelling presence in the digital landscape.

Our Webby Award–winning culinary content offering, Savor NYC SM , is updated monthly, along with a bimonthly feature on our social channels. Now our evergreen dining platform, Savor NYC focuses attention on the City's incredible dining scene to firmly reinforce NYC’s reputation as the dining capital of the world. The platform is an all-encompassing resource for locals and visitors, providing themes that highlight distinct cuisines, multicultural neighborhoods, seasonal dining and culinary offers. Savor NYC also showcases major citywide events and holidays through a culinary lens. Each month, the initiative receives promotion through owned, paid and earned media—including our website, social channels, email newsletters and LinkNYC screens. To date, the Savor NYC landing page on NYCtourism.com has earned over 270,000 unique page views. 

Our retail hub, Shopping in NYC , is updated quarterly and supported by long-form retail social videos featured bimonthly on our channels. Our team published several articles in support of this category, including “Immerse Yourself in the Luxury of Madison Avenue,” which invites readers to explore and shop the tony Upper East Side enclave; “Your Ultimate Guide to Holiday Shopping,” sponsored by Starbucks, featuring suggestions on the best locations across the City to purchase seasonal gifts; and a refresh of “25 Essential Soho Shops,” consistently one of our website’s best-performing pieces of content. In the meantime, our dedicated retail social coverage highlighted a wide swath of venues, including The Museum of Broadway Shop, The Shops at Rockefeller Center and holiday window displays of iconic retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s. Posts across Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube were focused on promoting shopping and retail, netting 361,000 impressions and 13.2 million engagements.

Arts & Culture

Arts and culture institutions and events across the five boroughs receive promotion through our quarterly guide , featuring prominent placement on our site and in social, as well as in our consumer- and business-facing newsletters. Each offers a variety of seasonal highlights, promoting the incredible depth and diversity of the City’s cultural milieu. Among the many institutions and organizations we covered this year were the Brooklyn Museum for their Spike Lee retrospective; artist Michael Richards’ show at the Bronx Museum; the New York Philharmonic; a performance by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; the Barkley Hendricks exhibition at the Frick Madison; costumes from the musical Six at The Museum of Broadway; and work from the show by artist Leslie Martinez at MoMA PS1. The Fall 2023 edition garnered 194,000 impressions and nearly 4,000 engagements alone.

Hip-Hop in NYC

We created an incredible array of content in support of the citywide celebrations of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop . That content now lives on the evergreen hip-hop hub on our website, serving as a resource for NYC visitors interested in exploring all aspects of the culture. The hub showcases inspirational stories, guides to hip-hop–themed small businesses, murals, interviews with notable figures and an interactive map with touchpoints to experience hip-hop culture across all five boroughs. Among our most important features are comprehensive guides to hip-hop history across the City; highlights of important moments in hip-hop from The Apollo Theater in Harlem; and interviews with Ralph McDaniels of Video Music Box , Debra Harris of Hush Hip Hop Tours and Rocky Bucano of The Hip Hop Museum. In addition, the team created a stunning printed map, promoted on over 150 bus shelters across the City, featuring the names of artists and places that helped shape and promote the movement. The team also inked a partnership with NYC radio celebrity Angie Martinez. We conducted our first-ever Instagram Live interview with her, and she recorded ads promoting the hip-hop hub on NYCtourism.com, distributed over Spotify. So far, the promotion has resulted in well over 100,000 unique page views.

It’s Time for Culture

Our It’s Time for Culture SM campaign, which ran in May 2023, supported the cultural community by showcasing unique value-added opportunities for arts lovers during one of the City’s prime moments on the cultural calendar. The program featured 103 events across 82 participants, and coincided with the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Frieze New York and NYCxDesign, offering a robust set of options for cultural visitors. It’s Time for Culture was promoted via NYCtourism.com, organic social media posts, a press release and targeted pitching, email newsletters, print and digital bus shelters, and LinkNYC screens. Paid media included ads on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, CTV, native display and SEM. In total, the program drove 115,000 landing page visits, delivered 62 million impressions on our out-of-home ads (valued at $578,000) and 7.5 million impressions for our digital paid media.

Check-In NYC

Like all of our content-driven initiatives, this ongoing series is published and promoted across both our web and social channels. As part of our mission to support NYC hotels and inspire visitation, #CheckInNYC covers a wide variety of the City’s accommodations, highlighting various hotel options, amenities, neighborhoods, new and renovated properties and only-in-New-York experiences that visitors can enjoy on a seasonal basis. Holiday- and NYC Winter Outing–themed content performed notably well. Over our social channels alone, the series has earned nearly 500,000 impressions and a 4.2% engagement rate—more than 2.5% higher than our average.

Other Content Initiatives

The team’s always-on efforts include a wealth of articles, posts and promotions that address our constituent audiences, aimed at inspiring potential travelers from diverse backgrounds to visit NYC. Each of these receives promotion through owned and paid media, including via our website, over our social channels and in our email newsletters.  In honor of U.S. Travel’s National Travel and Tourism Week, we compiled a list of six unmissable walking tours across the five boroughs to highlight in a media campaign that included a roundup article on NYCtourism.com, a social media series on Instagram and a weeklong LinkNYC flight. The tours included in the campaign reflect the diversity of NYC, covering Black arts and culture in Harlem, the global flavors of Astoria, the rich history of Mott Haven, sustainable eateries and shops in Williamsburg, the living history of Richmond Town in Staten Island and the Chassidic Jewish community of Crown Heights. We highlighted the Guides Association of New York City throughout the campaign as a resource to find guides who specialize in a range of tours across the five boroughs. Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, attractions and arts organizations of all types also receive ongoing coverage on our channels, in addition to dedicated promotion in our vibrancy campaigns.

Encouraging Sector Spending During Shoulder Periods

In 2023, we conducted two editions each of NYC Broadway Week SM , NYC Off-Broadway Week SM and NYC Restaurant Week®, complemented by the return of NYC Hotel Week SM and NYC Must-See Week SM , which are part of our expansive NYC Winter Outing SM program. Over 800 organizations participated in the NYC Winter Outing 2024 programs—a record. Member businesses were very active in promoting the program on email and social media posts, which we further amplified across all NYC Tourism + Conventions channels.

Our hallmark vibrancy initiatives support our members by increasing shoulder-season demand, offering visitors and locals the opportunity to enjoy experiences at an attractive price point during traditionally slow periods across hotels, restaurants, Broadway productions, Off-Broadway shows, museums, cultural institutions, attractions and tours. ‍ NYC Tourism + Conventions social published 140 organic posts throughout the NYC Winter Outing 2024 messaging cycle (Nov 14–Feb 4), earning 3.2 million impressions and 20,200 engagements.

Eighty-seven members participated in aggregate in our “Social Splash” campaigns dedicated to each program. In addition, 35 restaurants were nominated in our first-ever “Best Menu Award,” with many spots actively participating on their social channels to get out the vote. In 2024, the campaign creative for all programs was updated to incorporate our new brand design and creative system.

Growing our Audiences

Our strategic partnerships with a diverse array of organizations assist us in promoting NYC to potential travelers from around the world while nurturing a deeper appreciation for the City's rich experiences.

Reaching More Audiences Through Strategic Partnerships

Each of our partnerships showcase the breadth of activities available in the five boroughs, providing incremental support to our member businesses. Promoting cultural celebrations, sporting events and performing arts and working alongside travel and culinary institutions allows us to expand our audiences and the reach of our content. NYC Tourism + Conventions enables partners to promote their event or project through our digital and out-of-home marketing channels in exchange for providing equal exposure for our content through the partner’s website, newsletters and events.

Entertainment and Performing Arts

St. ann’s warehouse and monsoon wedding.

Monsoon Wedding is a stage musical adaptation of the acclaimed 2001 film of the same name, directed by Mira Nair. Telling the story of an Indian family as they prepare for a lavish wedding ceremony in Delhi, the cast and crew all represented the South Asian diaspora. NYC Tourism + Conventions partnered with St. Ann’s Warehouse to boost our Asian and South Asian content by including our South Asian guides, itineraries and content in their dedicated emails, ticket confirmation emails and social media posts.

And Just Like That…

This past summer celebrated the 25th anniversary of Sex and the City and the second season of Max’s spinoff And Just Like That . NYC Tourism + Conventions partnered with the franchise to celebrate this moment by coordinating lighting displays at the Empire State Building, Javits Center, One Bryant Park, One World Trade Center and Pier 17 in exchange for promotion in Max’s owned channels. Our brand and partnership was mentioned in the show’s official media release. Our shopping guides were featured on their social accounts, and they shared illuminated building images, tagging @nyctourism and the participating buildings. Additionally, our team participated in the Empire State Building lighting ceremony alongside actress Sarah Jessica Parker, confirming our role in enhancing the City’s tourism and cultural appeal.

The Life of Pi featured NYC Tourism + Conventions as a partner of the show on their website and drove to our Asian Experience content hub through dedicated social media posts, post-trip emails and inclusion on their website. In turn, the Life of Pi was promoted in our B2C newsletter content during AAPI Heritage Month in May.

BroadwayCon

BroadwayCon is an annual convention that brings together theater fans, professionals and performers to celebrate the world of Broadway. The event provides a unique opportunity for fans to connect with each other and with the Broadway community while celebrating their love for theater. We partnered with BroadwayCon to amplify our outreach for NYC Broadway Week. We delivered 1 million LinkNYC screen impressions, an event listing on our official website and social media support in exchange for a sponsorship logo inclusion, a dedicated digital screen amplifying NYC Broadway Week, social media promotion of our messaging and a dedicated post-conference email to attendees highlighting the program.

Chelsea Film Festival

The Chelsea Film Festival returned to NYC this year with a celebration of New York City’s cultural and cinematic landscape. They hosted the world premiere of our Local Legends film series, followed by a panel featuring our SVP of Content and DiversityInitiatives, Rondel Holder. This 11th anniversary of the Chelsea Film Festival had over 2,500+ submissions. Local Legends was one of 18 Indie Episodic films shown at this festival that garnered a 10,000 in-person attendance. We marketed this festival with 2 million LinkNYC impressions, an event listing on NYCtourism.com and a presence in NYC Tourism + Conventions’ Fall Guide in exchange for a screening of our Local Legends series at the festival, logo inclusion in event communications and banner ads in event emails.

New York Comedy Festival

We continued our partnership of the New York Comedy Festival by promoting the festival on LinkNYC screens, social media and in our consumer newsletters in exchange for promotion of our comedy guide through the festival's email channels. Our video content was also aired in the event venues.

SummerStage and Park Jams

Already a partner for our Hip-Hop in NYC content hub, NYC Tourism + Conventions partnered with Mass Appeal—already a partner for our Hip-Hop in NYC content hub—for the SummerStage Park Jams event on June19, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the genre as well as Juneteenth. The event took place at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park and featured performances by renowned hip-hop artists such as DJ Premier, Grandmaster Flash and Kid Capri, among others. We provided support for the event with out-of-home placements, social amplification, paid digital media and an event listing on our website. In return, we received partnership designation, logo presence on screens during the event, a dedicated call-out at the event, and access to tickets and VIP privileges. We also licensed our NYC Parks mark in celebration of hip-hop starting in a park to develop merchandise that was sold at the event and online.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

NYC Tourism + Conventions partnered with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for its Induction Ceremony on November 3 at Barclays Center. The event was also featured in our Hip Hop 50 campaign as it honored DJ Kool Herc, a pioneering figure in the foundation of hip-hop. We provided an event listing, paid social amplification, inclusion on LinkNYC screens and Taxi TV inventory and email newsletter inclusion in exchange for an ad in the digital program for the event, an email and social post promoting our hip-hop content to their membership, and logo inclusion in the credits on the Disney+ stream of the event. This exchange served as a fitting conclusion to our yearlong celebration of hip-hop, reinforcing NYC’s stature as a city that embraces and champions diverse musical legacies.

James Beard Foundation and Queens Night Market

NYC Tourism + Conventions partnered with the James Beard Foundation and Queens Night Market to promote an exciting culinary event at the newly opened Pier 57 dining venue operated by the James Beard Foundation. As part of the AAPI Heritage Month celebration, Queens Night Market hosted a special evening at Platform by JBF. We supported the event via an event listing, social media promotion and inviting community members featured in our Asian Experience content.

Multicultural

Black gotham experience.

We partnered with City Hall’s Public Design Commission and Black Gotham Experience (BGX) on the promotion and rollout of BGX’s short film, Epicenter . The film covers the history of NYC’s City Hall through the lens of the experiences of Black New Yorkers and debuted in February in commemoration of Black History Month. We promoted the film on LinkNYC screens and in email and social posts in exchange for attribution in the film and in social posts promoting the film, as well as rights and clearances to share a cutdown of the film in our social channels.

Harlem Week

This annual festival celebrates the rich history and culture of Harlem through in-person and virtual events. Ahead of the event’s 50th anniversary in 2024, we once again supported the program with social and editorial content in exchange for sponsor designation.

Diwali on the Hudson

Our collaboration with Diwali on the Hudson, in partnership with the Desai Foundation, marked a significant milestone as we joined forces for their 10th-year capstone event celebrating Diwali in NYC. This occasion marked the first-ever celebration of Diwali as a public-school holiday in the City. We gained valuable exposure by sharing our South Asian Guide on social channels owned by Diwali on the Hudson.

In celebration of the largest annual sporting event in NYC, we partnered with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) to promote the US Open on our homepage and in our summer guide, as well as with influencer and social coverage during Fan Week. In return, the USTA promoted our site on USOpen.org, included our banner ad in their Insider email newsletter and aired our 30-second destination video to their audience of 500,000 tennis fans.

TCS New York City Marathon and NYRR Midnight Run

We continued our partnership with New York Road Runners (NYRR) with promotion of the TCS NYC Marathon. NYRR promoted our marathon viewing guide across their owned channels, including push notifications via their app, email inclusions and within their social media posts. This year’s marathon saw 51,453 runners from across 131 countries reach the finish line. The marathon app was downloaded 480,000 times and had a social media following of 859,000. In turn, we promoted the NYRR New Year’s Eve Midnight Run, adding the event to our website’s event listings and showcasing it on targeted social media posts.

JP Morgan Tournament of Champions

The JP Morgan Tournament of Champions is a professional squash tournament that features the world’s best squash players. Held January 18–25, this year marked the 26th year of the tournament at Grand Central Terminal.  NYC Tourism + Conventions provided several assets to the tournament, including a custom restaurant guide around Grand Central, access to our Delegate Pass, a welcome letter from the Mayor and video assets shown at City Winery, where the watch party took place. The tournament included our logo and links to NYCtourism.com in newsletters and social media posts and promoted the Delegate Pass to their attendees.

FIFA recently announced MetLife Stadium as one of the host venues for soccer matches for the CONMEBOL Copa America 2024, which will be promoted through NYC Tourism + Conventions social channels. Matches include Chile vs Argentina (June 25), Uruguay vs Bolivia (June 27) and the semifinal match (July 9). Looking to the FIFA World Cup 26™, New York/New Jersey was awarded the final match on July 19, 2026, along with seven other matches, cementing our region as the most important stage for the world’s biggest events.

Kayak and Priceline

On October 5, Kayak and Priceline invited NYC Tourism + Conventions to create an engaging familiarization trip for 100 airline partners who were brought to NYC in celebration of the airline community. In return, we received prominent exposure throughout the event and the opportunity to present to the participants.

Expanding the Reach of NYC Marks at Home and Abroad

NYC Tourism + Conventions aligns with many organizations to reach audiences, featuring the City’s unique character in a variety of goods from well-known brands. In 2023, we entered our ninth year of partnership with the iconic New YorkCity brand Only NY. They continually reinvent and promote the NYC Parks, TheCity of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and NYC marks, keeping consumers interested in quintessentially New York City brands and institutions.We are excited to work on a partnership to highlight their 10th year as a licensee in 2025.

The collaboration between NYC Tourism + Conventions and Mass Appeal in Q3 enhanced the impact of the Hip Hop 50 celebration. Through this partnership, we successfully extended licensing rights for the NYC Parks and “Made in NYC” marks. This move enabled the production of exclusive apparel items, aligning with our business objectives and showcasing the City’s hip-hop culture. These products sold out during the Park Jams events as well as Hip Hop 50 Live at Yankee Stadium. They continue to be featured on Mass Appeal’s website and contribute to our broader goal of promoting New York City's cultural richness on a global scale. In Q4, we partnered with NYC streetwear apparel brand TIER to launch an exclusive capsule collection featuring our new logo. The partnership marks the first of its kind for NYC Tourism + Conventions since the organization rebranded. The limited travel capsule collection, which features an interpretation of New York City’s new logo, brand identity and color palette, comprises hoodies, sweatpants, socks and baseball hats. The collection was promoted through our owned channels, out-of-home placements and social media channels. The partnership also included a love letter to NYC by TIER founder Nigeria Ealey. Shared on NYCtourism.com, this collaboration was also featured in Complex , Essence and Travel and Tour World .

NYC Around the World

NYC Tourism + Conventions focuses efforts on attracting both leisure and business travel. By showcasing NYC as the world’s foremost destination for business events, engaging with the travel trade, generating positive press and empowering member success, we help the City maintain its allure on the global stage.

Attracting Longer-Staying, Higher-Spending International Travelers and Meeting Delegates

Since their hiatus during the height of the pandemic, we have now fully restored our network of 17 international in-market representative agencies doing important work on the ground to build visitation and promote our members across 26 countries. These representatives sell our destination to top leisure travel trade, business event organizers and local media outlets throughout their regions. The teams’ efforts in these markets have resulted in a steady increase in lead generation and bookings for all manner of business events, such as meetings and incentive trips. Some markets are offering standout results. Brazil and Mexico are leading the incentives market from the financial, automotive, retail and pharmaceutical sectors, with short booking windows of 30 to 120 days. NYC has also secured hosting rights for various incentives from Singapore, Thailand and Australia, with potential interest from Malaysia and Indonesia for events in May and September. Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Western Europe are pivotal markets for corporate events and meetings, and leads from these regions, particularly in the technology, financial and insurance sectors, will be an important focus for our team through 2026.

This robust sales activity in market, together with our award-winning tourism campaign, kept NYC and our members front of mind for travel audiences around the world. The 2022–2023 iteration of our global marketing campaign, which had 16 distinct market executions that featured travel partners, drove more than 1 billion ad impressions and 1.7 million trips. The campaign was refreshed for 2023–2024, once again featuring Lady Liberty as the ultimate icon of our great city, beckoning potential travelers to NYC. Out-of-home advertisements and media placements launched in January for the latest iteration and will continue to run through 2024.

Showcasing NYC as the World’s Premier Business Events Destination

The Convention Development team remains focused on returning group business to NYC, engaging meeting planners at trade shows and sales missions, and promoting NYC in major markets at home and abroad.

Our Marketing team supports these efforts with media buys that amplify team activities, resulting in over 6 million ad impressions. We also produced a dedicated video for this audience to reinforce the message that NYC is where successful meetings happen.

Here at home, our Destination Services team supports meetings and events throughout the year, including major annual shows hosted in the five boroughs each year like the National Retail Federation, New York Toy Fair and Comic Con. In total, business events bring nearly 6 million visitors to the City, boosting business not just for hotels but restaurants, attractions and service providers as well. This year the team revamped the Destination Services tool kit, which contains several complimentary resources for business event professionals to assist in their planning and to help promote their events in NYC.

Inspiring and Driving Leisure Travel Through the Trade

Engaging the travel trade to drive leisure business is a major focus for our team. We showcase NYC and our members by hosting familiarization trips for top product managers and top-selling travel agents, leading sales missions (in over 12 major international markets in 2023), targeting high-value market segments (like luxury and long stays) and by providing educational and business development opportunities for trade and members.

The New York City Travel Trade Academy (TTA) was relaunched in Q2 of 2023, educating the travel trade on how to package and sell the five boroughs to potential visitors. The content is now available in 10 languages: German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, French, Chinese, Hindi and English.

Our Tourism Development team also curates unforgettable experiences for niche market segments. For the luxury segment, the team fosters partnerships with industry-leading associations like Serandipians and Virtuoso, and attends key luxury trade shows like ILTM. A partnership with IGLTA also elevates New York City's profile within the LGBTQ+ travel community, highlighting tailored programs and resources for this market. Efforts to welcome Muslim travelers have been well received by the trade in the Middle East and Southeast Asia market, including promotion of the NYC Halal Travel Guide, the ability to filter restaurants to find halal offerings on our website and dedicated Muslim traveler-friendly content on NYCtourism.com. We are also committed to specifically engaging and welcoming the growing Black travel market by participating in the Black Travel Summit and successfully hosting our inaugural Black travel familiarization trip in February 2024.

The City is preparing to host the 2024 Student & Youth Travel Association’s (SYTA) conference this coming August. This is a terrific opportunity to reinforce NYC’s status as the most popular student and youth destination in North America. NYC Tourism + Conventions is hosting several business expos and reverse sales missions in the City. Members can connect with international buyers locally, saving them time and travel expenses. The travel trade and media representatives also get to discover the five boroughs in person and learn about new services, experiences and travel products across the City. In February 2024, NYC Tourism + Conventions executed two reverse sales missions and business expos, welcoming 40-plus clients from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Mexico. The team is planning more reverse sales missions and business expos later in the year with buyers from Ireland, the United Kingdom (March 25–29), France and Italy (June 16–20) and South America (August 19–23).

Keeping NYC Aspirational by Driving Positive Press Around the Globe

The Global Communications Team is constantly working to position New York City as a premier destination for leisure and business travel worldwide, evidenced by the more than 13,000 media stories they were able to affect, influence or place in 2023. Some of the year’s top themes targeted the rebound of international and business travel, a citywide celebration of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, ways to visit NYC affordably and shoulder-season promotions showcasing our vibrancy programs featuring the hotel, restaurant, theater, attractions and arts sectors. In addition, the Global Communications team maintains a comprehensive crisis communications strategy at all times, which includes close coordination with city agencies, members, partners and stakeholders to coordinate and disseminate information relevant to the tourism industry during emergencies including weather-related situations. Media relations outreach engaged approximately 900 journalists in target feeder markets to develop highly individualized stories that speak to New York City’s diverse visitor mix. Efforts included the Visiting Media program, which hosted over 260 group and individual visits, composed of site visits, tours and hotel stays across all five boroughs, supported by our members and partners. Our more than two dozen What's New media briefings in 10 markets provided a broad update on major events, programs, and openings citywide as a source of inspiration for future stories. Global media coverage of New York City illustrates the breadth, depth and value of a visit, drives urgency to visit and reinforces the importance of tourism as a major economic driver that benefits all New Yorkers.

SUPPORTING THRIVING COMMUNITIES

We are committed to promoting sustainable tourism, cultural enrichment and economic empowerment. Through strategic partnerships, fundraising initiatives and support programs, NYC Tourism + Conventions fosters an ecosystem where local businesses flourish, neighborhoods thrive and diversity is celebrated.

Advancing Sustainability Dialogue and Best Practices

With our extensive public transportation network and density, NYC is an excellent choice for travelers mindful of sustainability. To support industry efforts to become more sustainable, we are proud to be a member of U.S. Travel’s Sustainability Committee and have ongoing partnerships with Climate Week NYC: The Nest Climate Campus, the World Travel & Tourism Council and The Climate Group. Our editorial team also publishes content on sustainability topics for both our consumer and business audiences.

Supporting Arts, Culture and Community Through the New York City Tourism Foundation

The breadth of the arts and culture scene across the five boroughs is one of the greatest strengths and advantages of our destination. Building awareness of these offerings is an ongoing commitment and supporting the wide variety of small but burgeoning nonprofit arts and cultural organizations that distinguish our city from others is another important tactic. We raise funds through our charitable arm, the New York City Tourism Foundation, to provide grants to local nonprofit, arts and cultural organizations for their own tourism and marketing efforts to build audience and awareness. The Foundation’s primary source of funding is our annual gala, held in December, where we honor industry leaders that have made a lasting impact. The 2023 edition raised over $600,000. Last summer we added a more casual and accessible fundraising event called Summer Soiree. Both of these events will return in 2024.

Empowering Member Success

NYC Tourism + Conventions’ 1,800+ members have access to a suite of business-building tools and resources. Our Membership and Events teams organize webinars detailing ways to reach consumers, travel trade and business event planners. In-person events like the annual meeting, business card exchanges and executive mixers foster professional connections with fellow members. Our Events team shares regular opportunities for members to join the Convention and Tourism Development teams at trade shows and sales missions, and members can work with us to be showcased in familiarization trips and site inspections.

We host regular webinars, our Member Talks, which cover topics from accessibility to gender-expansive hospitality training. Last year, we created a series of educational webinars called Meet the Market to educate our members on specific market segments and international regions, which also served to drive interest in joining a sales mission or deep engagement. The team hosted nine Meet the Market sessions the past year, a cross departmental effort between Membership, Events, Tourism Development and international office representatives. Markets and travel segments covered included Asia, Latin America, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Australia/New Zealand, Canada, student travel and Black travel. Nearly 100 members went on to engage for the first time in sales missions, familiarization trips and trade shows after attending a session.

The Small Business Members Scholarship Program, now in its second year, is designed to provide qualified small businesses and cultural organizations with the necessary support and opportunity to participate in international sales missions and reverse sales missions with NYC Tourism + Conventions while sharing the true diversity of NYC experiences with the global trade. Following a comprehensive evaluation process, nine members were awarded the 2024 small business and cultural trade engagement scholarships. Additionally, through the membership portal of NYCtourism.com, members can access up-to-date market profiles and travel trend insights. Our Research team works on monthly updates to the New York City Tourism Barometer, also available to members providing information on visitor activities and spending, plus data on hotel performance, flight capacities, jobs and other helpful data. The Trend Report, published yearly each fall, provides additional detailed insights including visitation forecasts, hotel performance, traveler sentiment and global market updates.

Supporting Small Businesses Through Storytelling and Education

New York City’s variety of experiences is unmatched—a quality reflected in our members and their contributions to the City’s rich diversity. Through content on our website, social media campaigns, virtual education sessions and award-winning videos like our NYC Local Legends series, we uplift NYC’s multicultural communities to spread tourism’s economic benefits, connecting locals and visitors to the experiences that give the City its unique character. Our Tourism Ready program provides no-cost, valuable educational programming to the business community across the five boroughs on how to work with the travel trade to expand business opportunities. Through a series of free sessions, hospitality businesses learn to attract and manage group travel. These sessions also help expand tour operators’ offerings—encouraging repeat visitation and deeper exploration of the City’s neighborhoods, resulting in greater equity in tourism and economic impact. NYC Tourism + Conventions staff and members regularly participate in educational sessions and in-person experiences, learning about topics like LGBTQ+ and gender, land acknowledgements with the Lenape Center, Hispanic heritage, Diwali, accessibility, Black history and more.

2024 Strategic Priorities

In the year ahead, our work promoting the greatest city in the world will be driven by our core mission following four priority focus areas.

Continue positioning NYC as the world’s most aspirational and welcoming travel destination while influencing exploration of all five boroughs

We will continue to promote the vibrancy of all that NYC has to offer in a meaningful, consistent way across all of our channels, helping to keep our destination continually top of mind for travelers and prospective travelers around the world. Our Global Communications team will continue to work with key media outlets and influencers both locally and internationally to drive immediacy and demand, focusing on product and destination updates and promoting a positive image of NYC around the world. These updates will continue to stress not only all the can’t-miss seasonal developments and openings the City has to offer but also the new shows, restaurants, exhibitions and attractions that continue to provide a multitude of reasons to visit the five boroughs now—reinforcing that NYC is one of the most robust and diverse destinations in the world. We will also focus on promoting value and family-friendly ways to experience the City across all sectors in response to the economic challenges facing many of our key feeder markets while continuing to uplift opportunities that appeal to luxury or affluent travelers, again demonstrating the diversity of experiences available in NYC. Our social channels will continue to feature always-on content showcasing the exciting array of happenings in NYC at any given moment as well as ongoing content that supports each of our membership sectors. In addition to our internal team of experts, this content is developed by our award-winning Creator Squad, representing outstanding local voices across the categories of food, hotels, shopping, Broadway, culture and more. We will continue to showcase local businesses of all sizes, as well as community leaders and business owners across the five boroughs, to help promote neighborhood exploration and cultural diversity. Our Global Communications and Social Media teams will continue to support our signature marketing initiatives, including our vibrancy campaigns, to help drive traffic and sales to the hundreds of participating member businesses.   Alongside this work, our ongoing content initiatives will continue to showcase the diverse cultural fabric of our destination, inclusive of our seasonal guides and content platforms such as The Asian Experience in NYC, The Black Experience in NYC and The Latino Experience in NYC. These platforms showcase small businesses throughout the five boroughs, helping drive curiosity and exploration, and provide ample inspiration for visitors to return. They also appeal to first-timers eager for authentic cultural experiences to pair with visits to iconic sites. Our Marketing and Tourism teams are also focused on deeper audience development across key segments, such as luxury, Black travel and LGBTQ+. Our new luxury strategy includes refreshed content on our B2C site as well as a new B2B section exclusively for the luxury travel trade, featuring a specially curated selection of luxury product, resources and guides. We will also create a Luxury Travel Trade Council to create tighter connections with the luxury trade, ensuring they have ongoing product updates and that our organization has the latest insights into this impactful segment. Additionally, we will build on the success of our first Black Travel FAM that cut across our Tourism Development, Global Communications and Convention Sales teams, bringing leaders in Black media, leisure travel and business events into the City for an immersive destination experience. We will continue our engagement with the LGBTQ+ community, focusing our consumer messaging on NYC as a safe, welcoming destination, particularly as we ramp up to WorldPride in Washington, DC, in 2025, looking toward creating visitors’ pre- and/or post-event experiences. Our focus on student and youth travel has never been more important. We will host the 2024 Student and Youth Travel Association (SYTA) conference this August and will continue to focus on value and family-friendly travel moving forward. Other highlights include our partnership with the film Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire this March and a wealth of forthcoming content features about the City’s historic sites as we look forward to the 400th anniversary of the founding of NYC in 2025 and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 2026.

Sustainably restore visitation, spending and business events

Our marketing campaigns will continue to center around two primary tranches: vibrancy campaigns designed to support our member businesses during key need periods, and our global tourism campaign designed to drive direct bookings to NYC through partnerships with airlines and tour operators around the world. Our vibrancy campaigns comprise NYC Restaurant Week, NYC Broadway Week, NYC Must-See Week, NYC Off-Broadway Week and NYC Hotel Week. These programs will continue under the NYC Winter Outing umbrella in January/February, providing more incentive to drive overnight visitation during our most critical needs period. We will continue to strive for more participation in these programs across all five boroughs to help support as many businesses as possible through the outreach efforts of our Membership and Government Affairs teams. We will also build on our support of those businesses with a suite of tools, including social media campaigns and menu-engineering tips to help them achieve as much success as possible. Further, we will continue to secure airline and rail partners to support the program, as well as the assistance of other brands that can help increase promotional reach and awareness. We will repeat our iconic NYC Restaurant Week program in July/August, as well as NYC Broadway Week and NYC Off-Broadway Week in the fall. And thanks to the invaluable support of our partner Bloomberg Connects, we will once again launch our It’s Time for Culture program this October, designed to provide a moment in the spotlight for our participating cultural members and give culture-lovers around the world a powerful reason to visit NYC at that time of year. We will continue our global tourism campaign, designed to drive direct travel bookings in our key feeder markets through the support of impactful airline and tour operator partnerships. We will develop refreshed creative that continues to iterate on the wildly popular Lady Liberty, leveraging key learnings from our 2023 SMARI results, proving that this imagery resonates with consumers at home and abroad. Our goal will be to continue spreading this effort across as many markets as possible, leveraging our international out-of-home media, courtesy of our partnership with JCDecaux, as well as digital media where possible and across key owned channels. Augmenting these efforts, our Tourism Development team will continue to work with the travel trade to train them on the latest developments in the City to promote a rich, five-borough product offering. They will continue connecting our members to the trade at key trade shows throughout the year, with a renewed effort on Reverse Sales Missions and Business Expos in tandem with our Global Communications and Convention Sales teams. This will allow us to bring more critical players into the market to experience NYC firsthand and engage with a wider variety of our member businesses. Our Convention Sales team will remain steadfast in its focus on bringing in big events of all sizes to NYC from around the world. The team plans to meet and exceed its room-night goals, continuing to grow our current and new relationships with clients both domestically and internationally to bring events to the City and confirm definite hotel room nights for our members.​ As part of this effort, the team will streamline trade show participation and increase participation in regional and national industry activities to best connect with business event professionals on the ground and encourage them to bring their next event to NYC​. In partnership with the Creative/Content and Marketing teams, Convention Sales will update and expand its suite of marketing collateral and sales tools, as well as its ongoing B2B advertising campaigns, which is designed to drive lead generation and traffic to our Meeting Planner website for continued engagement. The team will also continue to grow its partnerships with key industry associations to keep NYC top of mind as a business event destination unlike any other in the world.

Fueling business growth through increased member engagement

We will continue to develop new and enhanced opportunities for deeper engagement with our member businesses to help drive sales and awareness. First, we will maintain a regular cadence of Business Card Exchanges across the five boroughs to create ongoing opportunities for members to network and discover new opportunities for partnerships and business building. We will also continue our popular Member Talks series, both in person and virtual, providing our members with the information and tools they need to stay competitive. We are also developing new opportunities for members to showcase their product offerings and initiatives across our ecosystem through more integrated content and ad sales opportunities, as well as sponsorships of our corporate events, such as our annual NYC Tourism Foundation Gala, our Annual Meeting, Tristate Meeting Planner Event, Member Talks, Tourism Ready, Reverse Sales Missions and Business Expos and more.

Lay the groundwork for forthcoming big events to maximize tourism impact

In 2025 and 2026, New York City will be the site for some of the biggest celebrations the world has ever seen. NYC Tourism + Conventions is already working to ensure the foundation is created now to optimally leverage them for the benefit of our members and our destination. In May 2024, we will announce our upcoming history platform to media and travel trade around the world at IPW, designed to commemorate both the 400th anniversary of the founding of NYC in 2025 and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 2026. This history platform, Founded By NYC, will commemorate both anniversaries by celebrating the unmatched creativity, innovation and influence New Yorkers have had over the world since our city’s founding. In our creative and content, we will uplift underrepresented voices and stories, particularly those of the Lenape Indian tribe, free and enslaved Black Americans, and women. Our content will cut across our editorial and social channels through an ongoing release of articles, interviews and photo galleries, celebrating the City’s past, present and future, and encouraging travelers to make their own history in NYC. Our platform will also include a partnership with the iconic Broadway musical Hamilton , because what better way to tell the story of NYC’s place in our nation’s founding than with the help of the story that started it all? This partnership will come to life in a variety of ways, with more details to be announced. As our America250 celebrations culminate in summer 2026, NYC and New Jersey will be home to the global celebration of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Eight matches will take place at New York New Jersey Stadium (MetLife Stadium), from Group Stage Matches starting June 13 to the Finals on July 19. As part of the festivities, there will be NYNJ Fan Fest events in every borough as well as many other tournament-related events. We look forward to leveraging this enormous opportunity to not only positively showcase our destination on a global stage but to encourage visitors to come early, explore more and stay longer.

2023 Financials

During the 12-month period ending June 30, 2023, NYC Tourism + Conventions recognized $21 million of the revenue received from the City through the city contract and an additional $11.6 million in other public funding, including additional funding from the City, the American Rescue Plan and New York State funds. Revenue from the private sector—including membership—totaled an additional $11.2 million. In FY24 and beyond, the company’s city contract is subject to further PEG reductions, which are expected to negatively impact revenue by at least an additional $3 million per year over the next four years.

Board of Directors

Executive committee, ex-officios.

©2024. New York City Tourism + Conventions

NEW YORK CITY TOURISM + CONVENTIONS

Annual report 2022–23.

New York City Tourism + Conventions is the official destination marketing organization and convention and visitors bureau for the five boroughs of New York City. Our mission is to maximize travel and tourism opportunities throughout the City, build economic prosperity and spread the dynamic image of NYC around the world.

Letter from OUR Chairman and CEO

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Welcome to our 2023 Annual Report. It is hard to believe that three years have passed since the pandemic halted most travel and leisure activities around the world, resulting in an unprecedented 65% decline in visitation to New York City. Fortunately, we have since made huge strides toward recovery, and in 2022 we reached 85% of 2019 visitation levels. Spending, sector employment and economic impact also climbed back to the 85% range. The competitive environment, however, is making greater demands than ever on our marketing efforts. Our full recovery and a return to growth will require implementation of the strategies and investments you will read about in this report. As you will discover in this document, the return of visitors across the City demonstrated the effectiveness of one-time incremental funding in 2021 and 2022, which fueled promotions and media reach for our campaigns and marketing programs. With a constant focus on strategically driving leisure travel and business events, we made an impact for our members—businesses big and small—in neighborhoods in all five boroughs. NYC & Company was active throughout the year developing and delivering content that directly addresses the changing times in which we work. Celebrating the City’s diverse communities with award-winning stories, neighborhood insights, and a commitment to equity and accessibility in the industry and our organization, our efforts connected to local and global visitors in traditional media and emerging channels. Our “always on” press and communications initiatives produced stories in dozens of languages, across hundreds of outlets in our most important markets. Thirty press conferences, 350 media visits, 17,000 influenced press stories and the reestablishment of international representation all proved key to the strategic and welcoming stories that reach millions of travelers and potential visitors. Throughout 2022, the Convention Development and Tourism Development teams were back in action, attending trade shows, organizing sales missions and rebuilding our networks and relationships. FAM trips and reverse sales missions brought key decision makers and buyers into the City to see and experience the opportunities directly. New business leads, RFPs and committed dates and groups are the result. As always, at the heart of our initiatives are the NYC & Company member businesses and organizations. Last year, 2022, saw the return of popular networking events that connect local businesses and create opportunities and a full calendar of education programs, including Tourism Ready, sustainable travel, accessible travel and new ways to engage with the market. Membership benefits included a new Monthly Tourism Barometer and frequent segment updates. Now we look to new, dedicated and sustainable funding and marketing opportunities that will allow us to keep performing at the highest level for the industry. As the market changes, so must we. In 2023, we are introducing a new brand to meet this new moment. Its success will require a sustained promotional effort and close collaboration with our members and community, but we remain committed as always to shared success. We look forward to working alongside you as New York City Tourism + Conventions to restore our industry’s economic prosperity and to continue growing the positive impact visitor spending makes across New York City. As always, thank you for your partnership and support. ‍ Charles Flateman Chairman New York City Tourism + Conventions Executive Vice President The Shubert Organization Fred Dixon President and CEO New York City Tourism + Conventions

ELEVATING NYC TOURISM

Our city, our culture and our industry have been impacted by profound change. This rebrand aims to evolve our sense of purpose and mission as we strengthen our relevance as the official tourism board for the five boroughs of New York City.

A New Brand to Meet a New Moment

As representatives of the City to the world, we recognize that the role we play in supporting it and helping it thrive has never been more important. As business and leisure travel recover, our efforts to restore demand, rebuild the tourism economy and drive visitation into all five boroughs is critical to local businesses and residents alike.   We have reaffirmed our mission to best serve the future of the destination and to lead NYC’s tourism industry.   We have reassessed and reaffirmed our mission to best serve this city and lead NYC’s tourism industry. Through extensive research and feedback, we found our identity needed a clearer connection to tourism, a simplified brand architecture that integrated B2C and B2B seamlessly, a coherent visual identity independent of city government, a tone more authentic to NYC and a renewed commitment to spread the economic benefits of tourism across communities and boroughs. This effort had to start with us clarifying to all our audiences—visitors, residents, stakeholders and partners in government—who we are, what we do and how our work benefits the five boroughs in the most equitable and responsible ways possible.

This is why we are now New York City Tourism + Conventions . With our new brand system, we will strengthen our relevance as the official tourism board for the world’s greatest destination.

Our Brand Strategy

The tourism authority of the five boroughs of ​New York City.

The economy, culture and spirit of New York City are fueled by the constant flow of energy, ideas and activity of locals and visitors alike.

Our members and the broader tourism industry of New York City.

Official tourism representation of the five boroughs of NYC around the world.

Connection of the tourism and hospitality industries to government.

A vast membership representing every borough and sector of the City's tourism economy.

A wealth of data and insight on travel in NYC.

A complete ecosystem of promotion, tools and business building programs.

The support and partnership of City Hall.

To help make New York City the most vital, diverse, equitable, exciting, accessible, energetic, vibrant, creative, welcoming city on earth.

To invite the world and energize the City, building equitable, sustainable economic prosperity and community through tourism for the mutual benefit of residents, businesses and visitors.

Equity Authenticity Resilience

Vibrant Welcoming Real

Connection​ Empowerment​ Amplification

Introducing New York City Tourism + Conventions to the World

In recent years, New York City has had to put its core qualities on display. Difficult as they have been, the challenges of the pandemic also highlighted the strength, resilience, authenticity and beauty of the five boroughs around the globe. ‍ As we roll out the new branding in the coming months, our mission remains to support New York City’s travel and tourism economy. In the process, we will continue to provide business and leisure visitors alike with a deeper, richer and more authentic experience of NYC. In so doing, we will seek out the support of New Yorkers themselves, actively engaging residents through a variety of activations and channels to assist all neighborhoods across the City in benefiting from inbound travel. Visitors and New Yorkers share an abiding love for New York City. They have an opportunity to help each other by coming together to amplify the benefits of exploring the City across all boroughs, communities, neighborhoods and businesses. It is our role to foster and facilitate that connection. Our brand launch campaign will use new digital tools, platform strategies and technologies to provocatively curate, target, personalize and deliver local points of view on the best ways to participate in the awe and wonder of being a visitor in New York City, and directly support the local economy.​ 

Our New Brand Manifesto

New York City is the greatest destination the world has ever produced. Ablaze at a distance, this town is lit up at street level with a trillion possible experiences at any given moment. This electric promise, five boroughs full, attracts day-trippers, bucket list-ers, sightseers, first-timers, on-the-regulars, frequent-fliers and meetings-and-convention-ers. They come for the buzz of being right where it’s all happening.  ​ But what is happening? And where is it?​  Well, that’s a matter of opinion. The must-try bagels, pizza, ramen, roti, Caribbean bake and sunrise coffee. The can’t-miss symphonies, DJs spinning vinyl, hip-hop haircuts, sonic oases and visual mosh pits. The best corner for this. The fastest route to that. The once-in-a-lifetime performances on Broadway, Off-Broadway and nowhere near Broadway in four other boroughs. The vibrant beaches, bodegas, dining rooms and dance halls. Which way to all the Little Italys, Indias, Brazils, Sri Lankas, Chinatowns, night markets, daytime discos and barrio barbecues? What cross streets for high-end streetwear, curated thrift and fabulous couture? What’s happening in Brooklyn? When in Queens? Where in Staten Island? Who in the Bronx? How in Manhattan?​  Pound for pound, there is nothing better than a 100% authentic NYC point of view to help visitors navigate this abundance. And fortunately—we New Yorkers aren’t shy about sharing. We are New York City Tourism + Conventions. As passionately opinionated New Yorkers ourselves, we know firsthand that the culture, spirit and economy of New York City fuel the constant flow of energy, ideas and activity of millions upon millions of perspectives. We rely on this “opinion power” to connect visitors to more profound and exhilarating NYC experiences across all five boroughs. By doing this, we help bring equitable, sustainable prosperity and community through tourism for the mutual benefit of all New Yorkers. 

Our new website, launching in Phase 2 of the rebrand this spring, will offer a compelling way to experience NYC Tourism + Conventions. With immersive video to place potential visitors directly into the heart of New York City, as well as intuitive design and an enormous breadth of inspirational and wayfinding content, nyctourism.com will serve as our new calling card—a first point of contact for visitors, near and far, to explore what the City has to offer, plan their trips and learn about our diverse communities. The site will also feature redesigned and refreshed sections for our membership, meeting planners, the travel trade and the media, along with areas for other stakeholders—all enticing ways for our partners to engage with us.

Insights on 2022 Tourism

The tourism and convention industry in New York City faced external challenges throughout 2022 ranging from economic uncertainty, inflationary pressures and the strong dollar to the ongoing risk of Covid-19. Even so, as was shown in the first two years of the pandemic, destination marketing and visitation in New York City is a case study in travel resurgence resting on creativity, energy and smart choices. After nearly two full years of pandemic disruption, the industry’s recovery momentum was interrupted temporarily by a surge in Covid cases due to the Omicron variant. Through January and well into February 2022, shows were canceled or postponed, hotel demand fell and people preferred to stay at home. While the interruption turned out to be short-lived, it did influence key indicators.  

Note: All figures, estimates and forecasts are subject to revision as conditions develop and additional data become available. Numbers may not sum due to rounding. Source: NYC & Company as of March 2023.

Hotel Performance

As we can see in the hotel data, the year started well below seasonal expectations. From near record lows in January (38% occupancy) and pandemic drops in room rates ($121), the hotel sector experienced steadily rising demand, returning and new inventory, rising occupancy rates and strong ADR increases. Traveling along seasonal trends, hotel indicators came back strongly. The year-end average occupancy rose to 74.4%, just 14% off pre-pandemic record levels. At the same time, ADR topped $286, 10% above 2019 peaks.

NYC Visitation—International & Domestic

Looking at visitation performance for the full year, the results reinforce the strong signs of recovery. By December 2022, with domestic visitation still responding to a major investment in advertising, leisure and even transient business travel levels were strong. At the same time, new investments and targeted messaging focused on key international markets were bringing more travelers to the City. The effects could be seen across the five boroughs. Even facing the retreat in January and February, the City hosted more than 56.7 million visitors who traveled 50 miles or more or stayed at least one night. By March, picking up with spring holiday travel and leading into the summer, visitation from domestic markets reached 47.3 million and international markets hit 9.4 million. Comparing 2022 results to the pre-pandemic benchmark, however, international travel still lags, down 31% from 2019 levels. The quicker return of domestic visitors pulled up the overall market, now just 15% below record levels. Strong day and overnight domestic travel supported the hotel demand and was a driver to museums, theater, concerts and tourist attractions, as well as a year-over-year increase in visitor spending on dining out and shopping.

NYC Visitation—Business & Leisure

Shifting our focus to the business and leisure segments, we see a similar split. Business travel, a key driver of hotel nights and event spending, climbed back to hit a 15% share of total trips. With 8.9 million business trips in 2022, visitation was almost 5 million below 2019 levels. The convention market, facing more tactical and financial obstacles, slowed this segment’s recovery pace. Smaller meetings and transient business travel were key to growth. The pattern looked different for leisure travel as the pandemic risks and regulations eased in the second quarter of 2022. Long-haul trips and extended weekend stays helped bring the year-end total to 47.8 million visitors, almost 90% of the 2019 record levels.

Key International Markets

Digging deeper into the international markets, the overall positive results benefited from a very successful advertising campaign in global markets during the first half of the year. Not only did it lift travel in the short-term, but the benefits of raising awareness played out through the year; 2022 saw the UK and Canada return to top positions among the international markets, attracting over 1.5 million visitors to NYC. There was notable strong performance from historically important European and Latin American markets filling out the list of top markets. France, Germany, Spain and Italy together were at 75% of benchmark 2019 levels. In the Americas, Brazil and Mexico led the market bringing almost 900,000 visits. Across the Pacific, Australia and India were top performers.

New Airports—More Flights and Capacity

The correlation between New York City’s position as the largest and most popular gateway to the US and our top international markets is highlighted in the table of scheduled flights as of March 2023. The strength of our air capacity is one of our greatest assets.  With more than 2,835 international flights a week into the region’s three airports, the conditions are strong to foster continued inbound growth.

Campaigns That Make a Difference

As always, our tourism and promotional campaigns play a significant role by encouraging locals and travelers to discover iconic sights and events across the five boroughs. Our team’s creative and strategic efforts have helped the City’s vibrant culture and unique experiences remain top of mind for anyone seeking to experience the best of NYC.

Our Award-Winning Global Tourism Campaign

Our largest-ever multiphase marketing campaign, It’s Time for New York City SM , has been a domestic and international success, putting NYC and our members front of mind for audiences around the world. With the affiliation of key travel partners in more than 15 markets, the 2021–2022 iteration drove more than 2.3 million trips and nearly $6 billion in visitor spending across the five boroughs. For the first iteration of the campaign, New York City Tourism + Conventions created a television campaign, which earned our team one of our two 2022 Emmy Awards. 

Following that success, the campaign creative was refreshed for 2022–2023 (again featuring the City’s beacon of welcome, Lady Liberty) and launched domestically, with United Airlines and Amtrak as partners, and internationally in 18 markets. A symbolic sign of recovery, the campaign refresh coincided with Lady Liberty celebrating 136 years and the crown at the Statue of Liberty reopening to the public for the first time since its shutdown in 2020. This new phase of the campaign continues to drive overnight visitation, increase travelers’ awareness of New York City and act as a reminder to audiences worldwide that there is no better time than the present to experience the City’s lively energy. We’ve established mutually beneficial partnerships through cobranded OOH and paid digital efforts, showcasing discounted fares and appealing packages from airlines, tour operators and other key travel partners. Our media has been spotted in every corner of the globe, showcasing our bright pink Lady Liberty creative on billboards, digital advertisements, bus shelters, baggage claims and more.

Our partners have taken a comprehensive and multifaceted approach to promoting all five boroughs, and their efforts have proven successful in attracting visitors to all areas of the City. They’ve curated customized newsletters, airport gate/lounge displays, travel magazines and in-flight literature, social media and more. As of March 2023, we’ve garnered over 400 million impressions and 7 million clicks from our digital ad campaign, resulting in tens of thousands of confirmed trips to the City so far. We will conduct another SMARI media attribution study at the end of the campaign, but our partners’ interim booking reports have shown extremely promising results:

• In Canada, Porter Airlines has reported an 85% increase in flight bookings to New York City.    
• America Unlimited, our German partner, has seen a 40% lift in bookings and an 80% increase in customer spending on New York City packages.  
• In Italy, the tour operator Turisanda has nearly doubled their seats booked to NYC via Neos Air.

We look forward to the continued success of this campaign through its completion in June.

The Best of the Five Boroughs: NYC Like a New Yorker

Our NYC Like a New Yorker campaign took geographical nouns, like “Queens,” and transformed them into verbs, speaking to the dynamism that is the core of the energy of the five boroughs. The aim was to encourage travelers to explore neighborhoods across the five boroughs—particularly those that may be lesser known. While the It’s Time for New York City campaign invited out-of-town and international audiences to visit the destination, NYC Like a New Yorker spoke to those who were already here in the five boroughs. We developed a multichannel marketing and communications effort aimed at supporting small businesses around NYC and lifting BIPOC- and women-owned enterprises, so that all experienced the economic benefits of our industry. Running from April to August 2022, the program featured one borough each month in a press release that showcased its essential neighborhood attractions and characteristics. This campaign was recognized by the U.S. Travel Association with the 2022 Destiny Award for “The Road Less Traveled” in August 2022.

NYC Local Legends

In our NYC Local Legends video series, notable New Yorkers share their perspectives on some of the five boroughs’ most vibrant and culturally rich neighborhoods. These five-to-seven-minute documentary-style videos feature our “legends” introducing other key neighborhood figures who add color to what makes the neighborhood special, creating an immersive experience with each episode. The series is part of our mission to offer more nuanced, personal perspectives on the City and highlight the wealth of NYC’s local businesses, particularly those that are women- and minority-owned, in order to encourage visitors to patronize them. The video series is supported by a robust marketing plan that includes organic and paid social, our consumer newsletter, LinkNYC screens, native ads and more.

In our first episode, released in December, Michael “DJ Spynfo” Eagen—celebrated DJ and owner of Sankofa Haus—shows us around the neighborhood of Mott Haven. As the South Bronx native explores the area, he connects with friends, reflects on the neighborhood’s progression from the 1970s to present day, discusses the area being the birthplace of hip-hop and graffiti and visits some of the authentic offerings spearheaded by locals, including Beatstro, Chocobar Cortés, Bronx Native and Rosa’s at Park. The video has garnered 1.5 million views to date with over 30 million impressions across our channels. In late January, we launched our second episode featuring We Run Uptown cofounder Hector Espinal Jr., who shows viewers around Washington Heights. Other episodes to be released in 2023 focus on neighborhoods in each of the other three boroughs: Jackson Heights, Queens; Stapleton, Staten Island; and Flatbush, Brooklyn. We will continue to explore other neighborhoods—and their history, culture and offerings—through the eyes of locals.

Celebrating the City’s Cuisines with Savor NYC

Launched in July of 2022 as part of the celebrations around the 30th anniversary of NYC Restaurant Week® and running through June of 2023, Savor NYC SM is an ongoing content platform that places a focus on the City’s incredible dining scene to firmly reinforce NYC’s reputation as the dining capital of the world. This content provides an all-encompassing resource for locals and visitors, complete with monthly themes that highlight distinct cuisines, multicultural neighborhoods, seasonal dining and culinary offers. In addition, Savor NYC showcases major citywide events and holidays through a culinary lens. In August, we featured a preview of fall restaurant openings and a wrap-up of outdoor dining. For September, we put a spotlight on sustainable dining and gathered a roundup of eco-conscious eateries focused on minimizing their impact on the planet. In October, we focused on Latino-owned eateries in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month and, separately, collaborated with a charming Instagram creator named Skelly, a 3.5-inch-tall skeleton who starred in a series of animated GIFs with NYC-made Halloween-themed treats. For November, we focused on dining options near holiday attractions; in December, we highlighted foods that only NYC “does right”—pizza, bagels and chopped cheese among them. More recent features included a Chinatown dining guide timed to coincide with Lunar New Year in January; a roundup of Black-owned restaurants for Black History Month; and a focus on women chefs for Women’s History Month.   The initiative includes culinary-themed press outreach, cross-promotion of our dining content on LinkNYC screens and through our social and email channels, and the creation of social-first dining content including a partnership with local creators Righteous Eats. (For more on the collaboration, see the Social section .) To date, Savor NYC has resulted in over 137,000 unique page views, with some of the most popular dining content being NYC Dining 101, our overview of the City’s restaurant scene.

IConic Sector Programs

Our hallmark shoulder-season initiatives continue to prove their value to members and visitors. We kicked off the fiscal year with the 30th anniversary of NYC Restaurant Week and recently concluded the fourth iteration of NYC Winter Outing SM , which groups together the City’s best deals. This May, we’ll also be launching a reenvisioned It’s Time for Culture SM program—New York City Tourism + Conventions’ newest addition to its vibrancy program portfolio. We are grateful to Commissioner Anne del Castillo and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment for their continued financial support of NYC Restaurant Week, NYC Broadway Week SM and NYC Off-Broadway Week SM .

NYC Restaurant Week’s 30th Anniversary

NYC Restaurant Week celebrated its 30th anniversary in the summer of 2022, offering prix-fixe menus at $30, $45 and $60 for lunch or dinner. More than 650 restaurants across the five boroughs took part in the program, including 15 of the original participants from 1992. As always, the program encouraged locals and visitors to explore the City’s vast, diverse and accessible restaurant scene while helping to support small businesses, the industry and its workers.

We executed several initiatives to commemorate the program’s third decade, including a press conference at Gage & Tollner—one of the oldest restaurants in New York City and an original 1992 Restaurant Week participant—which featured an appearance by Mayor Eric Adams. On August 3, our CMO, Nancy Mammana, rang the opening bell at Nasdaq MarketSite to commemorate the occasion. She was joined by our staff; the Co-Chairs of our Culinary Committee, David Burke and Tren’ness Woods-Black; and our NYC Restaurant Week marketing partners. It was an exciting day and a boost that generated even more exposure during the middle of the five-week program. For the first time ever, New York City Tourism + Conventions and Mastercard® partnered with Citizens Bank to further support the program. Additional partners of NYC Restaurant Week included Stella Artois, Wine Spectator , James Beard Foundation, OpenTable, the NYC Wine & Food Festival, Amtrak and Cobble. As our preferred payment partner, Mastercard provided a statement credit to registered cardholders, enabling them to receive $10 cash back on bills of $45 or more when dining at participating restaurants during the first two weeks of the program. They reported $893,288 from NYC Restaurant Week transactions, which translated into nearly $70,000 in statement credit rebates for the consumers. In total, the summer program drove 1.37 million landing page visits (32% higher than in summer 2021) and delivered 155 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $857,280, and 57 million impressions for our digital paid media resulting in 33,000 total estimated reservations.

NYC Broadway Week

The fall iteration of NYC Broadway Week returned for the first time since 2019 between September 6–25, 2022, once again offering 2-for-1 tickets to 22 of Broadway’s vibrant productions. The season’s lineup included newer shows like Funny Girl , Into the Woods , The Kite Runner , The Piano Lesson and Six . In partnership with The Broadway League and Mastercard, NYC Broadway Week was promoted on Mastercard’s Priceless.com platform, out-of-home media across the five boroughs and commercials running in NYC taxicabs. It was also promoted through New York City Tourism + Conventions social media channels using both original and user-generated content, pegged to the hashtag #NYCBroadwayWeek. Additional marketing partners of NYC Broadway Week included Citizens Bank, Ticketmaster and Telecharge. New York City Tourism + Conventions’ marketing efforts drove 689,000 landing page visits and 360,000 “buy now” visits (a 52% conversion rate) for NYC Broadway Week. We delivered 48.5 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $561,142, and over 5.7 million impressions for our digital paid media. Total sales for the program were $9,296,644 (124,013 tickets).

NYC Winter Outing 2023

NYC Winter Outing, our umbrella campaign for our signature vibrancy programs (NYC Restaurant Week, NYC Broadway Week, NYC Must-See Week SM and NYC Hotel Week SM ), invited visitors and locals to explore the best of the five boroughs by positioning the winter as a prime time to take advantage of the City’s best deals. This year’s edition began January 17 and ran through February 12. The savings encompassed discounted hotel rooms, prix-fixe menus and 2-for-1 ticket offers for Broadway shows, museums, attractions, performing arts and tours across all five boroughs. Each of our individual NYC Winter Outing programs, as well as the umbrella campaign, were promoted via SEM, a strategic programmatic digital campaign, printed and digital bus shelters, LinkNYC screens, commercials running in NYC taxicabs, press efforts and on our own website, as well as in our social and email channels. NYC Restaurant Week was also promoted with a two-page spread in The New York Times .

This year, we expanded our marketing partners exponentially to support our NYC Winter Outing program. Mastercard, as in previous years, was our preferred payment partner for the program, bringing in Citizens Bank once again as a key issuer. United Airlines joined us as an official partner; combined with Amtrak, NJ TRANSIT and MTA, we provided a robust variety of transportation options into New York City to facilitate travel for visitors who want to enjoy everything the programs have to offer. Most metrics for NYC Winter Outing 2023 surpassed 2022 and even 2019 benchmarks. NYC Broadway Week 2023 was our second highest grossing program with over $12 million in ticket sales. Website traffic to the individual program pages surpassed previous years, and over 700 organizations participated in NYC Winter Outing 2023 overall, including Broadway shows, museums, restaurants and attractions.

NYC Restaurant Week

Over 520 restaurants participated in the winter edition of this program, representing 86 neighborhoods and 48 cuisines. Mastercard once again provided a statement credit to registered cardholders, enabling them to receive $10 cash back on bills of $45 or more when dining on prix-fixe meals at a $30, $45 or $60 price point. Mastercard reported $980,365 in card spend from NYC Restaurant Week transactions, which translates into $95,000 in statement credit rebates for consumers. In total, the winter program drove 1.1 million landing page visits (19% higher than in winter 2022) and delivered 122 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $622,368, and 24 million impressions for our digital paid media resulting in 35,900 total estimated reservations.

NYC Broadway Week 2023 was our second-highest grossing iteration of this program with 154,364 tickets sold for $12,373,968 for 22 participating shows. This represented 14% of Broadway’s total revenue during these four weeks. Nearly a third of tickets were sold to visitors coming from at least 50 miles away. In total, the winter program drove 1.06 million landing page visits (21% higher than in winter 2022) and delivered 56 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $574,395, and 10.2 million impressions for our digital paid media.

NYC Must-See Week

This program supported the breadth of attractions, museums, tours and performing arts that can be found only in NYC. NYC Must-See Week had 50 participants in winter 2023, including many of the City’s icons and cultural institutions as well as tours and experiences throughout all five boroughs. The 2-for-1 ticket offer drove 327,000 landing page visits (48.5% higher than in winter 2022) and delivered 52.6 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $556,296, and 4.4 million impressions for our digital paid media.

NYC Hotel Week

Over 150 hotels offered a 23% discount on rooms for stays between January 3 and February 12, 2023. Reservations opened on November 15, 2022, which was two months prior to the public booking dates for the other programs. This early booking period was designed to give travelers who needed to plan ahead plenty of time to take advantage of the NYC Winter Outing offers. In total, the program drove 225,000 landing page visits (66% higher than in winter 2022) and delivered 101 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $1,030,082, and 12 million impressions for our digital paid media.

NYC Off-Broadway Week

The fall iteration of this program invited New Yorkers and visitors to experience Off-Broadway theater with 2-for-1 tickets to 30 participating shows. The fall program sold 4,706 tickets for $196,000 (data includes 18 shows). It ran from September 26 through October 9, 2022, driving 140,000 landing page visits (21% higher than in fall 2019) and delivered over 40 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $398,445, and 4.8 million impressions for our digital paid media. Immediately following NYC Winter Outing, the winter 2023 edition of NYC Off-Broadway Week launched with 26 participating shows. Both programs were generously supported by Mastercard and The Off-Broadway League. Media included a programmatic digital campaign, SEM, paid e-blasts, printed and digital bus shelters, LinkNYC screens, press efforts and NYCgo social and email channels. During the winter, the 2-for-1 ticket offer drove 137,000 landing page visits (41% higher than in winter 2022) and delivered over 48 million impressions on our out-of-home ads, valued at $445,000, and 5 million impressions for our digital paid media.

Diversity & Partnerships

With a city of over 8 million people from all walks of life, a collaborative approach that embraces different perspectives and backgrounds is crucial for creating an inclusive, welcoming destination. This past year, we recommitted to fostering and uplifting this approach through content, a variety of partnership initiatives and the support of our valued partners.

Celebrating the City’s Diverse Cultures  

The breadth and depth of culture and diversity found in New York City is unmatched anywhere else in the world. We are committed to providing a platform for the communities that contribute to them. In 2022, we created meaningful—and award-winning—content to celebrate the history and experiences of NYC’s multicultural communities. Mastercard and Crescent Rating’s 2022 Global Muslim Travel Index projects that there will be 140 million Muslim travelers in 2023, and this segment will reach 160 million by 2024—an important sector for the City. In February 2022, we released The Halal Travel Guide in an effort to promote New York City as a Muslim-friendly destination and to welcome Muslim travelers. Later in the year, we released an Arabic-language version of the guide. We are the first US tourism organization to create a dedicated resource for Muslim travelers, winning the Halal Travel Marketing Campaign of the Year at the Halal in Travel Awards by Crescent Rating. Our “Freedom to Be” film featuring the Rockaways’ Black surfing community in Queens won an Emmy Award, while the whole series was named a Webby Honoree in the Video–Documentary category. The Black Experience content hub was promoted in a branded content partnership with Group Black/Essence.com with banner ads, video ads, custom branded articles, newsletters, social media and influencer extensions across Instagram and TikTok. The campaign overdelivered, garnering 36 million impressions digitally and 33 million impressions via influencers.

In February 2023, we launched a photo-and-interview-based feature on our website, “Rising Stars of the Black Community,” timed to coincide with Black History Month. The series featured an inspiring cast of local creators who speak to the opportunities for and diversity within NYC’s Black community. Supported by paid media, earned media and our owned channels—email, social and website—the interviews have received 9,000 impressions to date. We also partnered with Black Gotham Experience and New York City’s Public Design Commission on “Epicenter,” a film that covers the history of NYC’s three City Halls through the lens of Black New Yorkers. The film, which highlights these too-often untold narratives, launched at City Hall in early February. It was supported via organic promotion over our owned channels and LinkNYC media, as well as through publicity efforts, including an organized tour for Travel + Leisure Editor in Chief Jacqui Gifford. The Latino Experience in NYC was named a Webby Honoree in Websites and Mobile Sites–Diversity & Inclusion. Newer published pieces include stories that highlight the vibrancy of Latino culture in the Bronx including a business roundup spotlighting over 20 Latino-owned businesses in the area and a profile on Puerto Rican musician Miguel Angel “Mike” Amadeo, owner of Bronx icon Casa Amadeo—the oldest continuously run music store in New York City. We launched a new platform video for The Asian Experience in NYC in time for AAPI Heritage Month in May, spotlighting the diversity within the Asian community and its many contributions to the City. In addition to neighborhood and cultural guides, other content includes a “Guide to Asian-Owned Bookstores” and features like “What We’ve Built: Leaders in the AAPI Community,” which focuses on four Asian American New Yorkers, the stories behind their businesses and the sense of community that they foster within their areas and throughout NYC.  The Latino Experience and The Asian Experience content hubs were promoted via Meta ads, Google search, programmatic and more to potential first-time and repeat visitors to NYC, along with people considering a city vacation and Latino and Asian communities with an interest in exploring their culture through travel. The campaign ran from June 30 to October 31, 2022, and garnered over 45 million impressions, 283,000 link clicks and 1.5 million video views. Aside from these multicultural platforms, we continue to uplift diverse voices throughout our content, such as our feature on Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Randall’s Island, spotlight on women-run restaurants and more. 

DEI Initiatives

With an ongoing goal of ensuring that NYC is the world's most welcoming and inclusive destination, our internal DEI Advisory Board and member-facing IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility) Committee have held a series of cultural webinars and trainings for our staff and our members. These included a Latin American Heritage Webinar, a Native American Heritage Webinar, a hip-hop themed Black History Month webinar, gender bias training with The Band of Sisters, gender expansive training with GET Phluid and more. These cultural webinars and trainings around diverse communities will continue, as well as the introduction of additional in-person offerings—including panels and cultural celebrations. The DEI Advisory Board also developed a land acknowledgement statement with representatives from the Lenape Center to recognize our residence on the homeland of the Lenape people and our commitment to uplifting Indigenous stories and history more in the future.

Accessible NYC 

Accessibility is critical to our efforts to promote the City. In the lead-up to our website relaunch, we are partnering with longtime consultants Peter Slatin of The Slatin Group and Lakshmee Lachhman-Persad of Accessible Travel NYC (and a member of our board of directors) to create and update content to inspire visitors and help them navigate the City once they arrive. In addition, we are working with Level Access, a digital accessibility consultant service, to ensure our digital channels meet or exceed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Accessibility is one of our forthcoming new website’s fundamentals, and we will continue to update, iterate and innovate with this audience firmly in mind. We also partnered with Mr. Slatin and Ms. Lachhman-Persad to deliver a series of four trainings on accessibility for our staff. The invigorating sessions focused on defining disability and accessibility, and internal and external relations with respect to accessibility. As with our other verticals, our ongoing accessibility content work continues, including a guide to Disability Pride events in NYC and “Accessible NYC Dining,” a guide to restaurants in NYC for those with disabilities. We also updated our “Guide to NYC Observatories,” as well as the accessibility filter for summer NYC Restaurant Week. Our members heard from our partners as we hosted a virtual New York City Tourism + Conventions Talks entitled “ADA at 32. Learn. Share. Hire!” Given the steady recovery of tourism and the challenge of recruiting and retaining staff for hospitality businesses, we brought together experts in disability employment who discussed the benefits of hiring workers with disabilities.  

To continue supporting NYC as the world’s number one LGBTQ+ destination, our Tourism Development team collaborated with Heritage of Pride and Pride organizations across the five boroughs. We expanded efforts as a global partner with the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association (IGLTA) by joining their Featured Destination program, which provides heightened recognition and visibility among LGBTQ+ travelers and year-round access to enhanced marketing and communication opportunities throughout the association’s worldwide network. The team reached over 1,100 members of the trade through the US-Mexico Travel & Tourism Forum and the Visit USA Brazil LGBTQ Panel + Marketplace and welcomed back PROUD Experiences to New York City (a Reed Exhibitions showcase for luxury travel). During PROUD Experiences, our Press team held a briefing for LGBTQ+ media during the trade show.  As for our marketing efforts, NYC Pride 2022 (the first in-person edition of the event since the pandemic began) served as a tentpole moment to drive overnight visitation and reengage with our LGBTQ+ audience. Featuring the line “It’s Time for NYC Pride,” the campaign was promoted throughout June on static and digital bus shelters, LinkNYC screens and at a viewing event we hosted during the NYC Pride March for media, partners and the travel trade. We also launched a robust paid digital campaign that incorporated Meta, paid search and both site direct and programmatic buys through Rivendell Media, Q.Digital and Pride Media, reaching LGBTQ Nation, Queerty and GayCities. Amtrak also promoted the campaign at amtrak.com/nyc and on their Instagram Stories as part of our larger partnership in the Northeast. The campaign generated 24 million impressions, 181,000 link clicks and 2.6 million video views. LGBTQ+ content was also created for Pride 2022 and throughout the year. Pieces published on our website included “How to Celebrate NYC Pride 2022,” a five-borough guide to LGBTQ+ celebrations in the City; “Pride Arts and Culture Events”; and a profile of Ginger’s, a lesbian bar, safe space and community hangout in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  LGBTQ+ audiences in the US, Mexico, Canada and the UK are targeted year-round as part of our borough content amplification program, where we leverage programmatic native display to reach consumers during moments of intent while they engage with contextually relevant content across the web. This media drives awareness and generates interest in diverse experiences around the five boroughs.  Efforts to support the LGBTQ+ travel segment around the world continued in 2023. We participated in an LGBTQ+ panel at Professional Convention Management Association Convening Leaders in January. The Tourism team followed World PRIDE celebrations in Sydney with a sales mission to New Zealand and Australia, where we hosted a client event with LGBTQ+ travel buyers. In February 2023, the team was in India for IGLTA’s first-ever travel symposium in the country.

Strategic Partnerships 

Our partnerships have allowed us to expand the reach of our content and provide incremental support to our member businesses in promotion of the five boroughs.

Our partnership with Mastercard continues to support our efforts to attract visitors who seek deeper exploration of the City. They are the preferred payment partner of all our signature marketing programs: NYC Winter Outing, NYC Restaurant Week, NYC Broadway Week, NYC Off-Broadway Week, NYC Must-See Week and NYC Hotel Week. Their presales, supporting early access to these programs and statement credit for NYC Restaurant Week, provide valuable support during key need periods.

Ongoing Promotional Partnerships

In 2022, we partnered with organizations such as Carib Biz Network, the Asian American International Film Festival and Green Book Global to highlight our multicultural articles and videos and increase our website traffic within the Latino, Asian and Black communities. We also promoted our Halal Travel Guide through a collaboration with The Halal Guys restaurant franchise and the play The Kite Runner. In the fall, we partnered with Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote their weeklong return to Brooklyn. The first airing on September 26, 2022, was the show’s most viewed telecast in Brooklyn since 2018. It reached over 1.6 million viewers and featured notable New Yorkers such as Tracy Morgan, Ben Stiller and Amy Schumer. The partnership leveraged our out-of-home media assets in exchange for placement of our It’s Time for New York City creative in an on-air bumper on the September 27 broadcast. Another meaningful partnership was with Little Amal Walks, a 12-foot-tall puppet representing a 10-year-old Syrian refugee, which walked throughout the five boroughs and participated in over 55 events put on by various NYC arts and culture organizations, showcasing our city's spirit of welcome and hope. We continue to collaborate with annual tentpole events like the Chelsea Film Festival, New York Comedy Festival, New York City Wine & Food Festival, The Armory Show, PaleyWKND and the US Open to showcase our city’s offerings to passionate audiences interested in music, art and culture.

Sustainability

Honoring our ongoing commitment to sustainability, we partnered with Climate Week NYC—the biggest global climate event of its kind—and The Nest Summit to bring together influential leaders in climate action from business, government and the climate community as they returned to an in-person program in September 2022 at the Javits Center. We produced a main stage event at The Nest with the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) addressing the role tourism can play in supporting biodiversity. ‍ Many of our members joined us in commemorating the start of Climate Week NYC with building lightings that turned the NYC skyline green. We amplified appearances made by Frankie the Dinosaur, the UN’s climate change mascot, during Climate Week NYC events as he promoted his “Don’t Choose Extinction” campaign. The week concluded with us joining the Climate Week NYC team at the ringing of the Nasdaq closing bell. We also partnered with Global Citizen Festival for its 10th anniversary, advocating for critical issues such as climate change, poverty and inequality.  We are proud to serve on the U.S. Travel Association Sustainable Travel Coalition to inform US travel on sustainability issues in NYC and develop best practices to achieve a more sustainable future for the tourism industry.

Bringing NYC to the World

Our diverse inbound market mix has always set New York City apart from other destinations, and we were proud to fully reestablish our pre-pandemic global reach over the course of the last year. Following the February 2023 appointment of our newest agency in China, we once again have 17 expert teams representing New York City across travel trade, public relations, marketing and MICE, in 28 countries on five continents.

Spreading the NYC Message Globally

As part of our “always on” media relations efforts, our Communications team engages journalists at home and around the world to proactively shape messaging about New York City and manage reactive and crisis communications efforts. Throughout 2022, we welcomed hundreds of media from across the country and around the world back to NYC, connecting them and their readers with all that NYC has to offer, from iconic sites, attractions and new openings to local neighborhood experiences and small businesses found only in the five boroughs.  Over the past year, we reached media in target markets through nearly 30 in-market press conferences, missions and media marketplace events globally, as well as here on the ground in NYC. We also supported more than 350 media visits, including 10 group familiarization trips, inviting travel writers and influencers to experience the vibrancy, diversity and dynamism of NYC in person. 

Press Releases, Newsletters & Fact Sheets  

We globally distributed 50 press releases to the media and participated in more than 100 media deskside meetings, shaping stories with information on new and seasonal activities and events, including “What’s New in New York City” quarterly fact sheets, highlighting our members across the five boroughs. In addition, we distributed more than 30 Tourism Update newsletters to members biweekly. 

Domestic PR 

On the domestic front, the team continued to engage with regional and drive-market media to tell positive destination stories through local broadcast affiliates, newspapers and digital media, while also securing features in top domestic travel magazines and coverage in key markets including Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and others. Major communications initiatives included the Get Local NYC campaign, which featured dedicated five-borough guides and CBS Radio segments as well as a preview of the 2023 NYC Winter Outing vibrancy campaign in the fall to maximize exposure and opportunity to drive bookings.  We continued our efforts to increase our engagement with US-based Spanish-speaking media outlets through dedicated outreach, highlighting our initiatives and Latino communities and businesses across the five boroughs.  

International PR 

Working to generate positive news about the five boroughs globally is market-specific work and crucial to promoting inbound travel to New York City—considering that international visitors account for 20% of NYC visitation but almost 50% of all spending and hotel room nights sold.  As international travel widely resumed this year, we reestablished NYC as a must-visit destination and told the world that we are back in a big, big way. Our team and in-market PR representatives hit the road, engaging travel editors and writers, and generating press coverage in key markets across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania through “What’s New in NYC” press conferences, trade shows, deskside meetings and media marketplaces.  

Coverage Results 

This ongoing surge of vital coverage placed a spotlight on our membership and signature programs, communications campaigns and local initiatives—including the It’s Time for New York City and It’s Time to Make It NYC SM campaigns. We placed approximately 17,000 positive news stories.  This strategic storytelling and messaging reinforces tourism as a major economic driver for the five boroughs and its role in the City’s continued recovery.  

NYC Ranked Among the World’s Best and Most Powerful Destinations 

We are proud to note that New York City was named 2023’s Number One Popular Destination in the United States. Tripadvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Best of the Best Awards celebrate tourists’ favorite destinations and places to go in different categories. Results are calculated from data gathered from user ratings and reviews on tripadvisor.com. NYC has also been named the Best Trending Domestic City – United States on Kayak’s Travel Awards. These awards showcase the most popular and top-rated hotels, destinations, airlines and rental cars. This recognition is based on real traveler searches from January to October of 2022, where New York City has proudly secured the number one spot on the list. These honors are a credit to our teams’ hard work in promoting our destination and in welcoming travelers with interests in all sectors of our tourism economy.  New York City has landed at number six on a new index from the World Travel & Tourism Council. The index ranks the world’s most powerful tourism destinations by visitor spending based on 2022 tourism data. 

Tourism Development

In 2022, the Tourism Development team continued to rebuild and strengthen leisure travel to NYC. By reestablishing our international representation to pre-Covid levels, we were able to focus on rebuilding trade relationships, relaunching NYC’s presence at major trade shows and sales missions, and aligning recovery campaigns with trade partners.

The team attended 29 trade shows and industry events in 2022. We conducted 10 sales missions and hosted nine familiarization trips with leisure travel partners. The strength of our destination product is unparalleled, and it is heartening to see passionate interest in promoting and booking NYC among members of the travel trade.   The team showcased New York City as the premier leisure destination for discerning travelers around the world at the International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) Latin America and Cannes, as well as during our Middle East Sales Mission and Virtuoso Travel Week. Our partnerships with top luxury travel networks such as Serandipians, Virtuoso and Signature Travel Network provide further opportunities to promote our city to their clientele. Domestic group business continued its rebound, and we promoted NYC at the American Bus Association (ABA), Travel Professionals of Color, the National Tour Association (NTA), the African American Travel Conference and the Student/Youth Travel Association (SYTA) Annual Conference ahead of hosting the latter event in 2024, giving New York City the amazing opportunity again to showcase the City to this market.    We celebrated the return of our NYC Center Stage luncheon at IPW in June, where we partnered with Broadway Inbound to feature performances from six Broadway shows and highlight our content hub, The Black Experience in NYC.  IPW is the largest leisure travel show in the USA, creating the best opportunity to reach global trade buyers and media in one place. Last year, the show took place in Orlando and was attended by nearly 4,800 attendees from over 60 countries. We conducted a total of 210 trade appointments over the course of three days. With the team attending seven trade shows and conducting five sales missions in major markets in Q1 to date, 2023 is off to a strong start. In late January, we hosted a US/Canada Reverse Sales Mission, creating an opportunity for members to meet domestic and Canadian travel trade in our own backyard. We hosted 15 buyers from the US and 15 from Canada with 30 members attending the sales mission. To expand the type of product shared with our trade partners, we held a Five-Borough Marketplace at the start of the mission, featuring 28 smaller member businesses who exemplify the diversity of product throughout the City. The team also launched a scholarship program to create opportunities for small businesses and cultural organizations to participate in sales missions with us and showcase the diverse neighborhood experiences of NYC to global trade buyers. To date, participation costs have been waived for nine small businesses and cultural organizations to participate in sales missions in 2023.  

Convention Development

The Convention Development team continued to source leads to drive group bookings, build and support relationships and forge direct connections for members with key business event planners. Our sales activities returned to pre-pandemic levels, with the team attending 84 total events and trade shows in 2022, ultimately generating 2,646 qualified group leads for members. The team confirmed 1,130 new group bookings last year totaling 269,063 room nights; this is 82% of our total 2019 volume. In terms of lost business, there were an additional 1,433 group leads that were lost to other destinations, representing roughly 1,243,200 room nights.  The primary reason for lost business was required space or dates were not available.

We were pleased to help host Marriott International’s annual association and corporate customer conference, The Exchange—hosted for the first time in New York City. This July event showcased a rejuvenated Times Square to over a thousand of the hotel brand’s top customers and association and corporate event planners, who all plan several events each year. Events like The Exchange help increase tourism in the City, bringing hundreds of future programs to NYC with millions of delegates.    The 2023 Global Conference for the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) took place in New York City February 17–20. This edition also marked the association’s 50th anniversary, celebrating five decades of incentive travel. Hosting this important conference in the City encourages new business throughout the five boroughs—specifically for the sales incentive market.

Supporting our partners and members with their client events and participating at trade shows like IMEX America, PCMA Convening Leaders, MPI World Education Congress, SITE Global Conference and annual conferences for the National Coalition of Black Meeting Professionals, LGBTQ Meeting Professionals Association and Financial & Insurance Conference Professionals ensures NYC stays top of mind for planners from every market vertical, with the corporate group segment remaining strong and associations increasingly sourcing for 2024 and beyond.     ‍ We’ve boosted the team’s efforts by continuing our It’s Time to Make It NYC SM marketing campaign, engaging planners in their sourcing cycle and drawing awareness to the City as the best destination for business events. The 2022 campaign saw over 10 million impressions on a mix of ads in Google, Meta and LinkedIn as well as sponsored emails and our own Meeting Planner Newsletter (with an average of 28% open rate). We also geotargeted ads to reach planners who were attending large conventions like IMEX to drive booth traffic and complemented this targeting with site-direct ads on industry websites like Northstar, Meeting Planners International, Cvent, SITE, PCMA and IMEX.  

We continue to position New York City as a global stage to host major events, like our ongoing bids to host the Democratic National Convention in 2024 and the FIFA World Cup in 2026 with New Jersey. As business ramps back up, our team is poised to take advantage of the opportunities in the marketplace and direct more of these critical big events and conventions to NYC. 

Destination Services

Our Destination Services team works with meeting planners and event organizers to help them put on a successful convention or event in New York City. They offer both turnkey and customized resources such as travel information, photos and videos, editorial content and attendance-building tools to help promote the City as the meeting destination, and to encourage attendees and exhibitors to explore NYC while they are in town on business. The Destination Services department also sources direct business leads and referrals to our members for everything from private dining to reception venues, transportation, temp staffing and other business services. Destination Services works closely with the Convention Development team and has directly supported over 120+ confirmed conventions, trade shows, meetings and big events, including over 40 that come to the City on an annual basis, as well as numerous high-profile bids for new business. Notable new events were the International Gynecologic Cancer Society meeting, The Marriott Exchange and the American Immigration Lawyers Association conference. Returning events included National Retail Federation (NRF), the Auto Show and Fleet Week. Additionally, NYC continues to prove a major draw for attendees, showed by attendance records broken in both B2B and B2C events. SITE Global Conference broke their attendance records with nearly 800 delegates at the New York Marriott Marquis, and Anime NYC with 55,000 attendees at Javits Center. As business travel in New York City continues to rebound, the Destination Services team is working hard to help shows grow their attendance and ensure NYC is positioned as a desirable, exciting and navigable meeting destination.  

Owned Channels

Our B2B and B2C website is the official digital guide for travelers and locals looking to explore the five boroughs. As we have now become New York City Tourism + Conventions, it is imperative we continue to reinforce our mission for visitors, residents and businesses through the B2C and B2B websites. We are revamping our sites to create more direct paths to the content consumers are seeking, and a more streamlined user experience overall, helping us to remain the official go-to NYC digital guide. Within our current B2C site, website optimizations are ongoing as we work with our digital partners to establish our new brand identity and messaging while measuring the success of our marketing tactics on different platforms. We are leveraging new partners within programmatic channels, such as Sojern, a leading travel marketing partner utilizing machine learning technology, and Bidtellect, a cookie-less ad delivery platform. These partners are helping us drive awareness and conversions for our tourism, vibrancy and evergreen campaigns on a larger scale than prior years. We have also introduced the use of QR codes to stimulate traffic and engagement to our site via out-of-home media promoting NYC. Continual analysis of our marketing strategies has led to significant growth in traffic with visits up 38% year over year, with our top driving channel being natural search—proving our incredibly strong positioning within keyword rankings. Comparing visits from Q1 of 2023 and 2022, we are pacing well ahead of last year, with visits up 22%.

Within the B2B site, providing support and valuable tools to our members, the travel trade, meeting planners and the press is an integral part of our mission statement. Our renewed B2B media strategy involves testing programmatic channels, streamlining our email tactics and continuing our use of social networks like LinkedIn to advance B2B goals. The site is also a repository for public-facing and member-only tourism marketing data and insights from our Research team. ‍

We are focusing on optimizing our targeted messaging efforts and strengthening our first-party data in preparation for the deprecation of cookies. In 2022, we engaged with subscribers by sharing our inspirational content and driving sales for our core marketing programs.

Our 2022 email marketing program had three primary objectives: improving subscriber retention, strengthening our segmentation strategy and increasing email performance. Throughout the year, we engaged with 512,000 subscribers, a 9% YoY increase from 2021. Additionally, 43.3 million emails were sent, a 35% increase from the previous year. To avoid overwhelming our subscriber base and ultimately reduce churn, the number of email campaigns sent this year stayed consistent with 2021. The email marketing program has placed an importance on creating individualized experiences for our subscribers. To achieve this goal, we began segmenting our audience by both geographic location and actions taken on our website. Furthermore, we have enhanced our consumer newsletters to provide meaningful, relevant content in an effort to boost subscriber engagement within our emails. Along with the Tourism Updates our Communications team managed, our other B2B emails shared the goal to keep our membership, meeting planner and travel trade audiences informed on NYC news and updates. As with our consumer emails, on average, our business-to-business email lists grew in 2022. We took steps to modify the cadence of our B2B emails by reducing the frequency of emails deployed each month. This was intended to avoid fatigue and to create a sense of consistency and balance with our communications, keeping NYC fresh in the minds of our subscribers.

The Social Media team’s initiatives are a core part of our messaging strategy. Through our presence on an array of channels, the team supports both critical company-wide programs and our ongoing inspirational content launches while expanding our reach and relevance with a variety of social-only tactics. We remain focused on celebrating New York City’s diversity—not only in terms of our neighbors and neighborhoods but also in the never-ending variety of things to do in the five boroughs. 

The team has continued recruiting talented New Yorkers for our Digital Creator Squad, a collective of NYC-based Instagram, TikTok and YouTube creatives from around the City with a combined audience of 1.7 million followers. Current members have focused on food and dining, events, hotels, museums and attractions, developing authentic content for our channels. Our Creator Squad has created an online presence exceeding programmatic benchmarks. Specifically, the engagement rate (comments, likes, shares, saves) for our Creator Squad posts is 5.6% on average—our non-Creator Squad posts run typically at 3.3% and industry benchmarks range from 1–5%. They are the voice of NYC, using the power of storytelling to inspire locals and tourists alike to travel to and within the five boroughs and to share the message of NYC as the greatest city in the world. ‍

Social Content Highlights

#SavorNYC To support the City’s long-standing businesses and celebrate the best of the boroughs, we created a social series around classic NYC restaurants. The series kicked off in October, aka National Pizza Month. A visit to Luigi’s Pizza in Park Slope, which captured YouTube-famous Brooklyn pizzamaker Gio Lanzo at work, generated 129,000 plays and 5,900 engagements on Instagram. Our partnership with Righteous Eats exceeded channel benchmarks by 37%. Among our most recent collaborations was a feature on 97-year-old Holocaust survivor and S&S Cheesecake founder Fred Schuster in the Bronx—which went viral with 495,000 video plays on Instagram and is now our most-popular Righteous Eats collaboration to date. 

#NYCMuseums Augmenting our efforts to promote the City’s cultural sector, we added museums to our regular Instagram Reels/TikTok rotation. A video tour of the Louis Armstrong House Museum became our first piece of viral content on TikTok (115,000 views and counting—our most popular TikTok post to date), while our collaboration with content creator Norberto Briceño, who produced a fascinating Metropolitan Museum of Art architecture reel for us on Instagram, has racked up 650,000 views.  

#CheckInNYC As part of our mission to support NYC hotels, our team added video content to our lineup in both organic and paid-partnership form with the debut of #CheckInNYC. We worked with longtime NYC travel journalist and content creator Laura Peruchi to explore the Lower East Side via a stay at Hotel Indigo Lower East Side New York, followed by a sponsored-content package in November spotlighting four Hilton properties as excellent spots for winter stays. So far, this initiative has generated 235,000 video plays on Instagram. 

Publications

The NYC Official Map has relaunched with 350,000 print copies and a digital presence on our website. The map was updated with detailed information provided by DOT and includes two new borough neighborhood inserts (Flatbush and Belmont) and 19 member advertisers. The NYC Official Map is distributed to approximately 500 points across NYC and the tristate area, including major hotels, airports and transit hubs.

Our licensing program puts some of the City’s most iconic marks into the hands of consumers via major retail partnerships and high-profile design collaborations. In 2022, these relationships and the resulting products enabled us to grow the NYC brand around the globe. As tourists return to the City, our souvenir shop business is rebounding to pre-pandemic levels. While continuously elevating different marks within the New York City portfolio, including those of the globally recognized FDNY and NYPD, we also support our own brands and company-wide initiatives through licensed products. We look forward to developing licensing opportunities for our new destination logo, “New York City.” Our ability to capitalize on trends remains an asset as we partnered with Only NY and DSNY on merchandise that generated buzz across social media and news outlets. We continue to find new licensees and expand into new categories by partnering with small NYC-based businesses with large social media presences and unique retail placements.

Membership, Education and Events

Our Membership team continued to adapt to meet the evolving needs of businesses across the City. We worked with businesses of all sizes and categories, across all five boroughs to keep them active, engaged and on the road to recovery. We introduced members to new audiences around the globe, offered revenue-driving opportunities through our signature vibrancy programs, upgraded our research and reports, invited them to attend industry events and sales missions, and provided virtual and in-person networking and educational opportunities. Member retention remains a key priority. We have 1,800 active members today and welcomed 68 new members in 2022. We are encouraged by a strong start to 2023, having welcomed 22 new members in Q1.

Member Events

Member events are consistently in the top three of member benefits and have made a strong comeback as people become more comfortable meeting in person. While virtual formats remain productive for education and training, we’ve hosted a steady stream of in-person events, bringing back our popular Business Card Exchanges. These included: Business Card Exchange: Bateaux Celestial May 2022 Business Card Exchange: Hard Rock Cafe September 2022 Business Card Exchange: Whitney Museum of American Art December 2022 Business Card Exchange: City Winery New York January 2023 Business Card Exchange: Brooklyn Winery March 2023

Member Education

Our signature “Talks” program featured industry updates, insights and education on key initiatives including Accessibility, Sustainability, Market Updates and more. Through virtual and in-person presentations and panel discussions, we gave members the opportunity to hear from and engage with industry experts and leading voices from around the world. We also brought back our Member Orientation & Refresher, NYC Tourism Cares and introduced a new program, Meet the Member, where businesses present to our full team. Talks: Global Student Travel ‍ January 2022 Members joined us in person at The Westin New York at Times Square for an industry update and panel discussion, presented by SYTA, on the global student industry, featuring market research, country updates on inbound and outbound travel, and tour operator and supplier perspectives on facilitating travel for 2022 and 2023. Talks: What’s on Tap for 2022 February 2022 Members joined us virtually for an in-depth review of the New York City Travel Barometer, a comprehensive and centralized source for high-frequency intelligence on the New York City travel industry and the broader economy. Members were able to learn more about our sales activities for 2022 and opportunities to participate in trade shows and sales missions, including an update from U.S. Travel Association’s Malcolm Smith, Senior Vice President of Business Development and General Manager of IPW. Talks: Your Membership in Action March 2022 In preparation for our Annual Meeting on March 30, the membership team created a new educational program, Your Membership in Action, which covered how to make the most of partnering with our company. In an in-person breakout session, members learned about tactical membership benefits, resources and opportunities for partnership engagement to help build their businesses. A highlight of this session was the demonstration of a brand-new interactive feature of the monthly NYC Travel Barometer Dashboard. NYC Tourism Cares: Morningside Park May 2022 Members were invited to join us in Morningside Park for NYC Tourism Cares, a day for volunteer service and networking. NYC was the original host city for Tourism Cares in 2003; and today NYC Tourism Cares brings the spirit and helping hands of the tourism industry to communities in all five boroughs. Talks: Summer Youth Employment Program June 2022 To assist our members with staffing shortages and to support workforce development, we teamed up with the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development and invited members to join a webinar to take advantage of the Summer Youth Employment Program, which provides paid work experiences and career exploration for a record 100,000 youths. Talks: ADA 32: Learn. Share. Hire! July 2022 With the steady recovery of tourism and the challenge to recruit and retain staff for hospitality businesses, we connected our members to access the ever-ready community of adults with disabilities. Moderated by Lakshmee Lachhman-Persad, Founder of AccessibleTravelNYC.com, and Peter Slatin, Founder of The Slatin Group, we heard from Martha Jackson, Acting Commissioner NYC Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities; Susan Crystal-Mansour, Ph.D., Vice President of Program Impact, National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation; and Alan Momeyer, Chief Human Resources Officer Emeritus, Loews Corporation. Member Orientation & Refresher September 2022 More than 200 members joined us for a virtual presentation of our initiatives for members and the City. They learned about tactical membership benefits, resources and opportunities for partnership engagement to help build their businesses. Talks: A Nature Positive Approach to Net-Zero Travel & Tourism September 2022 Members joined us in person at The Nest Summit Campus, during Climate Week NYC at the Javits Center, for a panel discussion on how the travel industry can fulfill its potential as a key nature positive sector and thereby lead the way to achieve the 1.5°C Paris Agreement target. Julia Simpson, President & CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council, along with Fred Dixon, hosted a conversation with travel and tourism leaders on how the industry is doing its part.   ‍ Talks: Mastercard Digital Doors for Small Business October 2022 Small businesses heard from Mastercard’s expert Ginger Siegel, North America Small Business Lead, who provided an overview on Mastercard Digital Doors program, a suite of tools and resources to help businesses expand their digital presence, keep their businesses safe and maximize sales. Hotel Partner Meeting October 2022 On October 24, we welcomed more than 200 hoteliers at the New York Hilton Midtown for the return of our annual Hotel Partner Meeting where we discussed the NYC market outlook and trends. Our team provided an update on campaigns, initiatives and member opportunities while expert guest speakers from Tourism Economics, STR and Amadeus broke down the latest visitation by segment and region and delivered forecasts and strategies for the future. Talks: Market Update & Business Development Opportunities November 2022 Leaders of our Convention, Tourism Development and Research teams hosted a virtual presentation of the latest NYC market outlook, upcoming trends and sales opportunities, including a deep dive into our 2023 Member Business Development Opportunities calendar of upcoming trade shows and sales missions. Member Orientation & Refresher February 2023 More than 250 members joined us for a virtual presentation of our initiatives for members and the City. They learned about tactical membership benefits, resources and opportunities for partnership engagement to help build their businesses.

Tourism Ready 

Members of the travel trade, including travel sellers, bundlers and event planners, seek out unique and authentic NYC experiences to offer their clients. Our free Tourism Ready program gives local businesses a better understanding of the power of the travel trade, as well as tools for working with this valuable sector to secure advanced bookings and repeat business. The goal of Tourism Ready is twofold: to expand the number of businesses benefiting from the tourism economy and to grow and diversify our tourism product offerings across the five boroughs. NYC is the first destination to create a program to educate local businesses about the tourism industry and provide instruction on how to both build tourism efforts through partnerships and collaborate with the travel trade. It is important to note that membership is not required to participate in the Tourism Ready program. The program is specifically designed to reach businesses that may not yet recognize the value of or understand how to work with the tourism industry.  We resumed the full Tourism Ready program in 2022, running our Tourism 101 sessions in a virtual format, and hosting borough-specific meetings in person in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx. More than 180 businesses across the five boroughs were involved in the 2022 program. 

NYC & Company Foundation  

The NYC & Company Foundation renewed its fundraising efforts in 2022 with the successful return of our Visionaries + Voices gala. The 2022 honorees included The New LaGuardia Airport, the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, Shelly Fireman and the Fireman Hospitality Group and Ellen Futter (President of the American Museum of Natural History). The evening, which included the Foundation’s first auction and appeal, raised more than $800,000—far exceeding all our recent fundraising efforts.  The funds will be distributed in part through the Borough Cultural Tourism Grant Program, which the Foundation launched in 1998. As we continue to emerge from the effects of the pandemic, these grants provide vital marketing and audience development funds to the City’s small cultural organizations, contributing directly to the diversity and dynamism of NYC. Since its inception, the grant program has provided nearly 200 organizations throughout the five boroughs with nearly $4 million in marketing, audience development and advertising funds to help the organizations reach new attendees.

2023 Strategic Priorities

As we continue to regain our visitation numbers of both leisure and business travelers and work to restore 2019 visitation levels in 2024, we will focus on dispersing the economic benefits of tourism throughout the five boroughs and encouraging longer, deeper engagement with our city.

Key Areas of Focus

We will represent New York City as the most vibrant and diverse destination in the world, and through the lens of our new branding and refreshed company mission will center this work around three main priorities: Continue positioning New York City as the world’s most aspirational and welcoming travel destination, while positively influencing exploration of all five boroughs Sustainably restore both visitation and visitor spending Expand our funding and resources, thereby ensuring destination competitiveness as well as financial sustainability for the organization

Rollout of New Company Branding

Following our unveiling at the Annual Meeting, we will implement a new, cohesive destination branding system to help guide all decisions moving forward and assist with consistent brand stewardship around the world. This will include a robust style guide and tool kit, defining all usage requirements and best practices. The new branding, especially our bold new “New York City” mark, will be used in all B2C consumer communications and marketing, and will be the focus of our next tourism campaign this fall, helping to build global equity in this evergreen IP around the world. The full “New York City Tourism + Conventions” mark will primarily be used in B2B and corporate communications initiatives, particularly in the areas of Convention Sales and Membership. All trade shows, merchandise, signage and collateral will be updated to reflect the new look and feel, inclusive of our updated mark, typography and a bespoke color palette inspired by the colors of NYC, such as Taxi Yellow, Ferry Orange, Liberty Green, Lox Pink, Rockaway Sand and Coffee Cup Blue. Also, for the first time, we will have a full suite of supporting animation artwork and an updated photographic style to reflect a more unified look and feel. We will also evolve and expand the rebrand throughout the year and beyond through like-minded partnerships, particularly in the areas of content and licensed merchandise, with local New York City designers and creators—with future announcements to come.

Development of New Company Website & Digital Strategies

The rebrand will vividly come to life with the launch of our new website, nyctourism.com, this spring. The website will be a complete expression of the rebrand, including the new color palette, photography style, icons and other graphic elements. The new website will be a significant upgrade from the current system, which was last updated in 2016. Specifically, it will utilize new front- and back-end systems and will create more direct paths to the content our audiences care about most. It will also take a mobile-first approach in order to be an even more valuable planning tool, as 75% of our current site traffic comes from mobile. The website is also being built with an “accessibility-first” approach, with special attention paid to all aspects of ADA compliance. We have hired a best-in-class agency, Level Access, to help guide and handle all optimizations and have contracted The Slatin Group for ongoing consulting. Accessibility is being built into the foundation of the site, ensuring all future content updates remain accessible and approachable for all. Also, in preparation for the deprecation of third party cookies in 2024, we will lay the groundwork in 2023 to capture more first party data in order to better engage with prospective travelers. Beginning with the launch of the new site, we will implement a new personalization strategy to target those consumers both from a geographic and behavioral perspective, retargeting them with more content they could be interested in and nudging them toward content they might also consider, all in the name of generating more exploration and awareness of our neighborhoods and businesses throughout the five boroughs. In tandem with this, we will continue the refinement and advancement of our email strategy. We have recently created dashboards in our Adobe systems that allow us to measure the impact that every email has on website metrics and bookings for all programs, building upon key learnings. For example, email traffic for NYC Winter Outing 2023 drove 4% of all bookings, which is the highest to date. We will also continue to focus on reducing the unsubscribe rate and increasing subscriber engagement through segment and creative analysis and strategic planning. From a social media perspective, we will continue our focus on video, leaning heavily toward short-form content on most channels to drive traffic to our channels and engagement with our promotional programs. Longer form content like Local Legends will continue to be distributed on channels like YouTube and nyctourism.com, serving as brand-building and awareness vehicles for local small businesses and neighborhoods. We will continue to deploy our ongoing rotation of influencers from outside the market across travel, lifestyle, food, culture, theater and retail, promoting our programs throughout the year to their audiences and channels, helping us to gain incremental reach and exposure. We’ll also continue to build our Creator Squad, a team of local NYC creators who develop content for our channels on an ongoing basis, helping to ensure we continue to provide a forum for authentic local voices and perspectives.

Bringing More Meetings, Conventions & Big Events to NYC

Building back our meetings and group travel business remain a core component of our recovery strategy, as we promote NYC as the preferred destination for business events, directly solicit planners and decision makers, and showcase manageability of the destination. We will launch The NYC Meetings Fund, designed to influence planners to host their next meeting or event in NYC by offsetting a percentage of the hard costs—up to $575,000 will be eligible for disbursement. We will continue targeting, and incentivizing where possible, big events (sports, entertainment, citywide conventions) like the DNC, Latin Grammys, NFL Draft, World Cup and UN Climate Action Summit (COP). From a convention development perspective, we will continue to focus on the East Coast as a source of potential meetings and events, as it continues to be our top feeder market, followed by both mid-Atlantic and the West Coast, with the tech industry leading the way. Mid-Atlantic association business is beginning to recover, and corporate events remain strong, led by the tech industry. The incentive business is also beginning to recover, and small meetings (under 100 on peak) remain strong and represent the largest percentage of our definite bookings. We will also continue our partnerships with companies like HelmsBriscoe and Conference Direct to ensure they continue booking NYC and we stay top of mind as a destination of choice.

Building Revenue and a Sustainable Funding Strategy

While the American Rescue Plan funding and additional city Blueprint funds were crucial to our ability to help generate visitation coming out of the pandemic in 2021–22, we now need to seek other dedicated, sustainable revenue sources in order to remain competitive as a global destination. We will continue to work with City Hall and our partners to explore the development of a Tourism Investment District (TID) like those recently adopted in Washington, DC, and Boston, which involves a small assessment paid by the hotel guest per room night. New revenue generated by this assessment would be earmarked for the Convention & Visitors Bureau’s promotion of overnight stays in NYC, including leisure tourism marketing and attracting meetings, conventions and big events. This concept was included in the “New” New York Panel’s recommendation released in December 2022, and TIDs have been created in the majority of competing cities across the United States. New York City is the last remaining major destination in the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast without a TID funding stream. If created here, it would allow us to continue the robust international and domestic marketing required to grow hotel demand and benefit neighborhoods, local businesses and cultural organizations. In the meantime, we will have additional digital ad sales opportunities made possible by the new website launch, inclusive of programmatic, new content packages and video sponsorship opportunities. We are also revamping our sponsorship efforts, packaging up potential opportunities for our B2B programs such as Member Talks, Annual Meeting and Tourism Ready, and are evaluating the possible renewal of our global Mastercard partnership. Our Membership Growth and Retention strategy will continue focusing on bringing acquisition back closer to pre-pandemic levels. Our Membership Development efforts will support our five-borough strategy through localized membership participation in all business and leisure programs, promotions and events, ensuring we are representing NYC in an equitable, inclusive manner around the world.

Expansion of Our Diversity Content & Initiatives

We will continue building upon the momentum we have achieved in the last two years with our multicultural content platforms and a video-first approach. Our Local Legends video series, featuring notable New Yorkers sharing their perspectives on some of the five boroughs’ most vibrant and culturally rich neighborhoods, launched in January and will continue through June. We will also create an original photo and/or video series for The Asian Experience platform and will continue to develop written and photo content for all three multicultural platforms (Black, Latino and Asian), inserting a multicultural POV through all our content on an ongoing basis. In terms of our diversity initiatives, we will continue our ongoing staff trainings, such as the past Band of Sisters gender bias training and GET Phluid gender expansive training, as well as cultural webinars like our Latin American Heritage Month webinar, Native American Heritage Month webinar and Black History Month hip-hop themed webinar, via our staff DEI Advisory Board. Additionally, we’ll be creating offline opportunities for staff such as the following:

• Staff cultural outings and in-office cultural experiences
• Volunteer days 
• Collaboration on and support of internal HR practices
• Development of strategic partnerships with relevant organizations

Finally, we will extend trainings, panel discussions and more to our membership throughout the year via our IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility) Committee, such as the above-mentioned Band of Sisters, GET Phluid and our Marketing to Diverse Audiences breakout session at the Annual Meeting.

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop

A highlight of 2023 will be the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, shining a spotlight on the Bronx and hip-hop culture throughout the City. Countless notable rappers have come out of NYC, but the music will be just one part of this celebration. The 50th anniversary will pay tribute to all of hip-hop culture, including the art, dance, music and fashion that was born from it in NYC but continues to influence the world. Our new Hip-Hop 50 content hub launching in April will include cultural guides, Q&A interviews, profiles, social media extensions and more through December.

Driving Deeper Neighborhood Exploration

Promoting our neighborhoods and local businesses throughout the five boroughs has never been more important, as we work to encourage deeper, more meaningful exploration of our city. We will continue to promote our neighborhood guides and content packages under the Explore NYC campaign on an ongoing basis, leveraging paid media to drive awareness around that content. We will also continue to produce original content that showcases those local businesses and business owners, leveraging both influencers and creators to further extend that work. Ultimately, we are committed to the further growth of our editorial and video content that promotes the rich diversity, experiences and cultural vibrancy of our neighborhoods to attract new audiences and showcase community.

Tourism Ready

We remain committed to the critical work of our Tourism Ready program. The goal of Tourism Ready is twofold: to expand the number of businesses benefiting from the tourism economy and to grow and diversify our tourism product offerings across the five boroughs. In 2023, for the program’s seventh year, we will work even more closely with neighborhood marketing organizations to reach further into communities. The team has initiated pilot programs with the Long Island City Partnership and Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce with the Sunset Park BID and will look to expand upon this effort throughout the year.

Building Up Shoulder Seasons

Our suite of vibrancy programs designed to support local businesses across restaurants, Broadway, Off-Broadway, hotels and attractions will continue during key need periods in winter and summer. Specifically, we’ll be working to increase the performance and impact of those programs as well as the level of participation of local businesses in the five boroughs. We are adding a promotion for culture in May 2023, It’s Time for Culture, which will coincide with citywide large art events like Future Fair, Independent Art Fair, Frieze and NYCxDesign to illustrate that NYC is a perfect destination for culture lovers in May. We’ll also continue to support our retail sector with ongoing content amplification on our website and in social.

Diversification & Restoration of International Leisure Markets

We will continue to stimulate leisure demand internationally from both a trade and consumer perspective, with our current tourism campaign, It’s Time for New York City, running through June 2023. Our next iteration of the campaign, designed to drive trip bookings via partnerships with airlines and tour operators in key feeder markets, will launch again this fall with a focus on our new branding. Alongside this work, our team will continue to work with our 17 international rep offices to develop additional opportunities with the travel trade to keep NYC top of mind for travelers while ensuring the trade is continually educated on the latest product developments. To that end, will be launching our new Travel Trade Academy (TTA) this spring, offering a deep-dive education on the specifics of each borough and our diverse, constantly changing product offering in an easy-to-navigate interface. As we continue our ongoing engagement and content publishing in our Chinese social channels, we will continue monitoring and planning for the return of the Chinese visitor in the second half of the year, laying the groundwork for upcoming travel campaigns. In the meantime, we are renewing our focus on markets that are showing great growth over the last year such as India, Brazil and Australia. We will ensure that there are equitable opportunities for exposure and participation in our programs for smaller businesses through two reverse sales missions per year in market, which provide affordable, valuable engagement with the travel trade. We will also expand our scholarship program for trade shows and sales missions, which helps to offset participation fees for smaller organizations, again ensuring the diversity of NYC’s product offering is properly represented around the world.

2022 Financials

During the 12-month period ending June 30, 2022, NYC & Company recognized $25.3 million of the revenue received from the City through the American Rescue Plan, in addition to $21.2 million from the city contract and $1.3 million in restoration of the prior year PEG adjustment. The company also received $1.8 million in funding from the City to directly support NYC Homecoming. In FY23 and beyond, the company’s city contract is subject to more PEG reductions, which are expected to negatively impact revenue by at least $3.7 million over the next four years. In FY22, the company recognized $3.2 million in PPP forgiveness and private revenue began to recover slightly; we anticipate that continuing through FY23.

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FACT SHEET: NYC TRAVEL TREND OUTLOOK 2020-2024

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NYC Travel Trend Outlook 2020-2024

[Source: NYC & Company/Tourism Economics as of 11/16/20 updated]

The New York City travel industry began 2020 in good position for another record year, with very strong performance in January, February and early March. The public health and safety measures put in place in mid-March to address the pandemic put practically all leisure and most business travel on hold. The result has been an unmatched drop in visitation during the remaining nine months of 2020. The year-end forecast for 22.9 million visitors now looks to be 66% below 2019 levels. The domestic market was only one-third of typical annual travel (20.5 million. Domestic inbound visitation (i.e., travel from more than 50 miles one-way or with an overnight stay) was partially sustained by regional travel which began to pick up in summer. The international market was down over 80% compared to last year as inbound international has been frozen since April (2.4 million visitors).

With a plan for widespread vaccination taking shape for Q1 2021, the outlook for a pick-up in regional and short-haul domestic travel will begin to lift the levels of visitation in the late springearly summer. If the health breakthroughs align with lifting restrictions on activities and gatherings the pace may move more quickly. The international market will take longer to catch up, but could pick up 2 million visitors by year end.

Given the uncertainty generated by the pandemic for economic recovery and consumer confidence in travel, the conservative outlook takes us to 2024 to top the 2019 benchmark. The overall industry could be back to 2019 levels in three years, especially if business travel restrictions affecting large events and meetings are eased in 2022. At the same time, New York City’s strong position with international travelers could help revive the cautious global travel market sooner. It is worth noting that international travel after September 11, 2001 took fully four years to recover.

“While the full recovery of global tourism will be gradual following the wide distribution of successful vaccines in 2021, we are bullish on New York City’s recovery and its enduring appeal to travelers. Given significant pent-up demand, we target regaining half our 2019 volume by end of 2021 and to be fully back three years from then,” said NYC & Company President and CEO Fred Dixon.

New York: A concrete jungle where dreams are still made

Like moths to a flame, travelers from near and far used to flock by the millions to New York City (NYC). In 2019 alone, the most visited city in the Western hemisphere played host to 67 million visitors. 1 The tourism industry in New York City: Reigniting the return , Office of the New York State Comptroller, April 2021, osc.state.ny.us.

About the authors

The vast majority—around 80 percent—came for leisure. 2 The tourism industry in New York City: Reigniting the return , Office of the New York State Comptroller, April 2021, osc.state.ny.us. For many, peering down from the top of the Empire State Building, exploring masterpieces at the Met, marveling at the Statue of Liberty, or digging into a pizza at Lombardi’s (or a pastrami sandwich at Katz’s Deli) before spending the evening at a musical on Broadway fulfilled a lifelong dream.

The rest came for business. They attended meetings in Midtown and the Financial District and networked at conferences at the Javits Center and Piers 92/94. But even those on work trips often couldn’t resist catching a sports event at Barclays Center, strolling through Prospect Park, or enjoying a craft cocktail at one of the city’s many high-end bars. In this city, business frequently slips into “bleisure.”

Whatever their purpose, travelers are a large part of what makes NYC the global economic and cultural powerhouse it is today. In fact, it is the United States’ most connected city, with regular flights to 147 international destinations (Exhibit 1). Twenty-one percent of all foreign visitors who fly into the country make sure to include NYC in their itinerary, more than any other city (and twice that of Los Angeles, which comes in second). 3 Passenger Intelligence Services (Pas-IS) data.

Before the pandemic, visitors contributed $47.4 billion to NYC’s local economy, supporting nearly 300,000 tourism jobs in hospitality, food and beverage, retail, and transport, which amounted to 7 percent of employment in the private sector. The travel industry indirectly supported an additional 376,800 jobs, from dry cleaners laundering linens for the city’s hotels to farmers supplying fresh produce to local restaurants. 4 The tourism industry in New York City: Reigniting the return .

Thus, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out at the start of 2020, the blow to NYC’s travel industry sent ripple effects across the city’s entire economy. The financial impact was estimated to be six times that of the 9/11 attacks, and the city lost around $1.2 billion in tourism-related tax revenues. 5 The tourism industry in New York City: Reigniting the return . Last year, overall visits fell by 67 percent, which contributed to an 82 percent plunge in hotel occupancy. 6 A call for action and collaboration , Partnership for New York City, July 2020, pfnyc.org. At least 1,000 bars and restaurants closed, 7 Bao Ong, “A favorite Columbia hangout shutters on the Upper West Side—and more closings,” New York Eater, August 27,2021, ny.eater.com. and many retail stores went out of business. In the once-buzzy Soho district, more than 40 stores pulled down their shutters for good. 8 Matthew Haag, “SoHo catered to free-spending tourists. What happens without them?” New York Times , October 5, 2021, nytimes.com.

More than 31 percent of tourism jobs were eliminated, including 46 percent of jobs across hotels in Manhattan. 9 The tourism industry in New York City: Reigniting the return . The sector’s devastation also disproportionately impacted financially vulnerable populations, given that 60 percent of travel industry workers over 25 years of age don’t have a bachelor’s degree, and minorities and immigrants make up the majority of the industry’s workforce (66 percent and 46 percent, respectively).

In this article, we take the pulse of NYC’s travel industry today, more than 20 months since the city saw its first COVID-19 case. While we observe glimmers of hope that the travel sector may be recovering, significant challenges remain that may slow down the return of travel jobs, as well as the industry’s efforts to fully recoup its financial losses.

At the time of publication, the Omicron variant is casting further doubt on how quickly life can return to normalcy, as authorities consider the necessary public-health measures to reintroduce. It’s a stark reminder that the pandemic is an ever-evolving public-health situation, especially during the colder months.

In the face of greater unpredictability, it’s become more critical for industry stakeholders in both the public and private sectors to come together now to empower a faster, stronger, and better resurgence of the travel sector. We suggest three key areas of opportunity for travel players to focus their efforts.

Opportunities and challenges for New York City’s travel sector

As the city enters its second winter living with the pandemic, there are reasons to be both optimistic and concerned. On the positive side, travelers are slowly returning. NYC’s destination marketing organization, NYC & Company, projects about 36.1 million will visit this year 10 “NYC & Company launches largest-ever global tourism recovery campaign, ‘It’s Time for New York City,’” NYC & Company, June 24, 2021, business.nycgo.com. but that a return to prepandemic levels is not likely to be achieved before 2025. 11 Patrick McGeehan, “Tourism, engine for NYC economy, may not fully recover until 2025,” New York Times , May 13, 2021, nytimes.com. Meanwhile, the Omicron variant threatens to roll back some of the progress made, by further extending the pandemic and delaying the return of travelers.

McKinsey has surveyed thousands of executives on the likelihood of nine different scenarios  for economic outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. These scenarios account for the GDP impact of the virus’s health effects and the effectiveness of governments’ public-health and economic-policy responses to it. In the United States, the A1 scenario, which assumes a muted recovery, is expected to be the most likely. The A2 scenario, which assumes a stronger rebound, is also worth considering given recent indicators of an acceleration in recovery. Both scenarios have factored in some virus resurgence—such as outbreaks of the Omicron variant—with the difference being the pace and time needed for economic recovery.

We used the assumptions in these scenarios to project air-passenger traffic to NYC, and our analysis suggests that, in both scenarios, air travel to the city may potentially rebound by 2023 based on various reopening plans, improving GDP trajectory due to pent-up demand, recoveries in other markets, and limited structural impact outside of business travel. This may create additional upside to potential visitor numbers over the next couple of years (Exhibit 2).

A number of other indicators point to people’s eagerness to come back to NYC to reconnect, explore new destinations, or revisit cherished favorite places. For one, Airbnb cited NYC as the fall’s most popular destination. 12 “Extended weekend stays and scenic cities top fall travel plans,” Airbnb, August 30, 2021, news.airbnb.com. And when travelers do visit NYC, they are likely to spend more than they would have prepandemic, based on McKinsey analysis indicating that savings rates spiked 10 to 20 percent  in the United States during the pandemic.

However, significant hurdles remain as the travel sector picks back up. Domestic and leisure travelers will likely be the first to return in big numbers, but higher-spending international and business travelers leave a greater impact on the travel economy. Business travelers spend twice as much as leisure travelers despite making up a smaller portion of the city’s total visitors. Even though international travelers made up only around 20 percent of total visitors before the pandemic, they spent $1,709 on average, or 3.5 times more than domestic travelers. Chinese visitors alone spent $3.3 billion in NYC in 2019, accounting for nearly 15 percent of total international spending (Exhibit 3).

Business and international travelers will likely be the hardest to lure back. McKinsey analyses  reveal that, historically, corporate travel takes longer to bounce back after a downturn. While the leisure-travel market took two years to recover after the 2008 financial crisis, business travel took five years. Meanwhile, many regions around the world are still bound by travel restrictions and quarantine requirements. While the United States has recently reopened to vaccinated foreign travelers, 13 Vjosa Isai, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and Heather Murphy, “Vaccinated travelers from abroad, including Canadians with mixed doses, can enter the U.S. starting Nov. 8,” New York Times , November 8, 2021, nytimes.com. and there has been an uptick in international bookings, many people continue to feel unsafe traveling internationally . Of course, the Omicron variant further complicates the outlook.

As such, the return of global visitors may be much slower and more uncertain than domestic travelers. In addition, ongoing work-from-home policies and flexible work arrangements are keeping more people at home, and therefore reducing the need for people to travel to (and within) NYC.

Given the importance of travelers to the city’s social and economic fabric, the sector’s slower recovery relative to other sectors throughout the pandemic, and the impact of current and potential future coronavirus variants, creative approaches should be considered for the sector to emerge stronger.

We propose three areas to consider: focusing efforts on encouraging domestic travelers to visit—and revisit—the city; reinvigorating the workforce to enhance visitors’ experiences; and reimagining the city as a hub for business travel by keeping up to date with changing working norms.

Create new reasons for domestic travelers to (re)visit New York City

With “It’s Time for New York City” (at $30 million, the city’s largest-ever marketing campaign, launched in June 2021 14 “NYC & Company launches largest-ever global tourism recovery campaign ‘It’s Time for New York City,’” NYC & Company, June 24, 2021, business.nycgo.com. ), it’s clear NYC knows how important targeted, analytical marketing is for the recovery of the travel sector.

The good news is that many Americans are ready to travel. According to the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Air Travel Pulse survey, the United States has one of the highest “flight interest indexes” in the world, signaling Americans’ comfort with flying. In addition, historically, two-thirds of domestic travelers to NYC hailed from cities in New York state and neighboring states such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. 15 The tourism industry in New York City: Reigniting the return . As evidenced by the recent uptick in bookings, NYC has become a great option for nearby travelers to “escape the suburban sprawl” or experience something new in a familiar destination.

Approaches to entice domestic travelers include doubling-down on offering must-attend, extraordinary events, encouraging visitors to extend their stays to explore undiscovered parts of NYC, and harnessing digitization to elevate visitor experiences with smart-city (or technologically modern) concepts.

Historically, people have traveled to NYC for its incredible events—musicals, fairs, sporting events, and concerts. Increasing the frequency of not-to-be-missed events, especially during nonpeak seasons, and marketing them across the United States, could be one way to persuade travelers to book a trip.

Some destinations have given their iconic landmarks an artistic twist so that even return visitors can encounter a familiar monument with fresh eyes. This year, Cairo surrounded the Giza pyramids with pop-up art installations, 16 Nadine Khalil, “At the pyramids of Giza, an unprecedented exhibition of contemporary art,” Artsy, November 2, 2021, artsy.com. and the entire Arc de Triomphe in Paris was wrapped in polypropylene to honor the late artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude. 17 “An estimated 6 million people viewed L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris, 1961–2021 in person,” Office du Tourisme Paris, November 9, 2021, christojeanneclaude.net. Could something similar (or completely different) be done with, say, the Brooklyn Bridge?

Given that most domestic visitors historically don’t stay in NYC for more than two days, a “two- or multicenter” approach could be adopted to market itineraries that add a day or two to travel plans so visits have more of an international-getaway feel. For example, itineraries could start with an urban experience, directing travelers to Times Square, followed by a viewing of art at MoMA PS1 in Queens, a visit to Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island, or a tour of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Combined with thoughtful improvements to the city’s urban transit system, such an approach could make it easier for visitors to explore new parts of the city outside of Manhattan, as well as help to infuse lesser-known neighborhoods with greater vibrancy and economic stimulus.

Leveraging digital technologies to bring smart-city concepts to life could enhance visitor experiences and attract new travelers, while helping the city progress toward its sustainability goals. Recent upgrades to airports servicing the area demonstrate the city’s clear focus on achieving such goals.

Meanwhile, the digital traffic-flow management tools used to plot the most efficient routes for rideshares and taxis could indicate journeys that produce the least amount of carbon emissions. Mobile apps could notify tourists that the Museum of Modern Art is overcrowded and indicate a time they should come back as well as suggest the Bronx Museum of the Arts current exhibition as an alternative.

Bringing these ideas to life may require both public–private partnerships and investment. By working together, the city would be better positioned to welcome back and delight leisure travelers.

Reinvigorate the travel workforce

As in healthcare, tourism, too, has its frontline workers. These are the friendly faces that greet you at hotel reception, drive you around in yellow cabs (or rideshare vehicles), and serve you a meal at your favorite eatery. They are the first point of contact and have a direct impact on whether visitors’ experiences in NYC are positive or negative.

McKinsey research projects 18 Current Population Survey; McKinsey analysis, in collaboration with Oxford Economics. that the accommodation and food services, arts, entertainment, and recreation, and retail trade sectors in NYC may see a total decline of 23,000 jobs between the fourth quarters of 2019 and 2022, while the number of healthcare jobs may rise by 40,000. Roles such as retail sales staff and hospitality workers—which have a median wage of $30,000 (versus the city’s overall median wage of $52,000)—are likely to experience a net employment decline of 12,000.

Exacerbated by widespread labor shortages across industries, a diminished workforce could see the travel and hospitality industry short-staffed and lacking the capacity to deliver indelible memories to visitors. Tourism growth would also likely be inhibited.

Addressing this could require sustained interventions across a number of dimensions. To attract and retain workers in tourism and hospitality, employers and public stakeholders could partner to offer incentives and perks, such as providing discounted transportation from home to the workplace, flexible working times (where feasible), and career training and development for further advancement within the sector. Focusing on fostering a sense of purpose, meaning, and fulfillment (through rewards, improved working lifestyles, and recognition) could help minimize attrition and help ensure that well-trained and talented travel employees don’t switch industries.

Dubai, through Dubai Way, offers courses with certifications for workers to expand their skill sets and develop expertise in hospitality and service. 19 “‘Dubai way’ training platform offers online learning resources to strengthen skillset of tourism workforce,” Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, April 29, 2020, dubaitourism.gov.ae. Similarly, NYC could offer sommelier classes for restaurant servers or marketing courses for tour guides to help workers advance their careers.

Reimagine New York City as a hub for business travel

Norms around the way we work and how business is conducted are changing, and NYC could reimagine its role as a nexus of business activity. As more companies embrace hybrid models of work and more functions are performed remotely, some forms of business travel may never return. McKinsey analysis suggests this may result in a permanent decline  of up to 20 percent in corporate travel.

For those who do begin to travel for work again, we expect  regional business travel for sales meetings to be among the first to return. While international conferences would likely be the last to return, companies may be more receptive to sending employees to regional conferences. Companies, especially small and medium-size enterprises, may seek a “first player advantage” to cultivate important client relationships in-person instead of through a video screen. One way to target these travelers would be to market bleisure events, such as access to physically distanced meeting spaces combined with tickets to the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, to help enhance potential client relationships.

This would also open up opportunities to convert vacant office and meeting spaces left by the hollowing out of physical offices for more flexible uses, such as networking events, company off-site meetings, start-up incubators, and smaller-scale, hybrid conferences. Some abandoned real estate could even be converted into accommodations with integrated coworking and community-building elements to cater to a growing number of people looking for flexible work arrangements with an emphasis on work–life balance. Similarly, coworking spaces with health-safety protocols in place may emerge as a new asset for business-travel circuits or for people who want to live in NYC but work for companies without a local presence.

Bringing visitors back to NYC is critical for a full recovery to take root. Many New Yorkers depend on it for their livelihoods. Now is the time for the city to draw from its spirit of reinvention, which has been a beacon drawing in travelers from across the United States and abroad for centuries. As the singer Alicia Keys reminds us in “The Empire State of Mind,” the streets “will make you feel brand-new. Big lights will inspire you. Let’s hear it for New York.”

Alex Cosmas , Linda Liu , and Maurice Obeid are partners in McKinsey’s New York office, where Yael Taqqu is a senior partner. Jules Seeley is a senior partner in the Boston office.

The authors wish to thank Urs Binggeli, Margaux Constantin, Clay Cowan, Guenter Fuchs, Vik Krishnan, Ellen Scully, Tony Shorris, Rebecca Stone, and Jasperina de Vries for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Jason Li, a senior editor in the Shanghai office.

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Data shows massive surge in NYC tourists in 2021

Data released on Wednesday showed a significant increase in tourists visiting the Big Apple.

In 2021, there were 33 million visitors as opposed to 22 million in 2020, according to a new report from NYC & Company, the city’s tourism nonprofit organization.

In 2022, they’re expecting numbers to reach 56 million, still slightly below pre-pandemic levels in 2019 when there were about 66 million travelers in New York City.

What You Need To Know

Data shows a 50 percent increase in tourists from 2020 to 2021 in nyc it's still 100 percent lower than numbers in 2019 the city is spending $10 million in marketing to attract more travelers to the city tourism numbers aren't expected to match 2019 data until 2023.

NYC & Company is expecting 2022 to bring a 300 percent increase in international travelers, particularly from Europe.

“It’s the first time I used my passport since lockdown one in England,” said Wendy Prior, who is visiting from England.

She was in Times Square waiting in line with her daughter to buy tickets to a Broadway show.

“It was just about coming and doing lots of exciting things. I’ve been here before but it’s the first time for her,” she said.

Anne Sullivan also made the trip from England.

“I promised [my daughter] a trip to New York ten years ago and this is the first opportunity we’ve had to do it,” she said.

Getting numbers back to pre-pandemic levels is a big undertaking, said Chris Heywood, the executive vice president of global communications at NYC & Company.

“We’re facing a competitive situation where every tourism destination around the world is courting that international traveler and domestic travelers,” he said. “So what can NYC do to remain top of mind?”

Heywood said the city budgeted $10 million for them to attract tourists, after spending $30 million last year.

International visitors are one of the major focuses.

“You have so many businesses that depend on the international traveler and these visitors stay longer, they spend more,” he said.

NYC & Company launched a new campaign called Get Local NYC to get visitors to explore all five boroughs.

The agency projects 2023 will be the soonest the city will reach the same number of tourists as 2019.

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NYC tourism has rebounded to 85% of pre-pandemic levels

Plus, here's how to score a sweet hotel deal this winter.

In the next six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, 6.5 million people are expected to visit New York City—the latest sign of the city’s rebound amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s tourism bureau announced today.

In 2022 overall, the city expects 56.4 million total visitors by year's end, according to NYC & Company. That would account for 85% of the record 2019 tourism levels, and the city hopes to surpass those 2019 visitation numbers by 2024. The figures comprise about 9 million international visitors and 47.5 million domestic travelers.

RECOMMENDED: Best Christmas things to do in NYC

"We know that we've had tremendous challenges but we have been rebuilding and rebuilding strongly with a vengeance and New York is back in a big way for tourists," Charles Flateman, chair of NYC & Company's board of directors, said at a press conference today.

To spur even more tourism in the new year, NYC & Company is again hosting NYC Hotel Week from January 3 through February 12 offering up to 23% off more than 140 hotels. Featured hotels include The Beekman in Lower Manhattan, Radio Hotel in Washington Heights, Opera House Hotel in the Bronx and The Rockaway Hotel in the Rockaways, among many others.

"Reservations are now open and we invite travelers and even New Yorkers alike," NYC & Company CEO Fred Dixon said. "This is a great opportunity for staycations," 

Citywide, NYC has more than 124,000 hotel rooms with another 11,000 rooms expected to open in the next three years. 

"As travelers think more about slow travel, as they think about their impact on the community, we want to remind them that there are amazing small businesses and small experiences across the five boroughs to explore," Dixon said. "So going local, getting deeper into community is one of the messages in supporting small businesses."

We are, to many people, the capital of the world, and this is a must-see destination.

Officials also highlighted Broadway's robust season with 10 new shows opening in November alone, plus the newly opened Museum of Broadway .

Last week alone, Flateman said, Broadway shows grossed about $32 million and hosted 272,000 attendees, numbers that reflect "how significant Broadway is to our Time Square economy and to our city economy."

Soon, NYC & Company will announce details about NYC Winter Outing , held from January 17 to February 12, with deals on Broadway shows, dining, tours, museums and more. Bookings will open on January 10. 

"New York City is always on the top handful of desired destinations for any traveler anywhere around the world," Flateman said. "We are, to many people, the capital of the world, and this is a must-see destination."

• Rossilynne Skena Culgan Things to Do Editor

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• Last Updated On
• June 10, 2023

New York City Visitor Statistics and Tourism Figures 2022

Considered one of the greatest cities on the planet and most certainly one of the most famous, New York City is known for its exclusive shops, legendary Broadway performances and landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, not to mention the plethora of celebs and socialites that call the Big Applehome.

Both international and domestic tourism play a big part in the success of New York City, but just how big is this part? We took a look at UK tourism and travel stats in the big city, and have rounded up all the facts and figures to need to know.

Key New York City Visitor Statistics

• New York City is the number one US city that Brits want to visit.
• In 2019, New York City attracted 66.6 million visitors from across the globe, keeping a tenth-consecutive annual record.
• Tourists in New York City account for over 25% of all tourists in the entire state of New York.
• When the pandemic hit at the start of 2020, the number of people looking to fly domestically to New York City plummeted by almost 80% .

New York City Tourism: How Many Brits Want to Visit?

Pre-pandemic, New York City enjoyed a record number of tourists thanks to enthusiastic Brits , claiming the title of sixth most visited city in the world in 2018.

But can the Big Apple expect to enjoy the privilege of British tourism for years to come? It’s all well and good finding out how many Brits have visited New York City in the past, but we wanted to find out just how many Brits want to visit New York City, as well as other large US cities, in the future.

So in November 2021 we used Censuswide to ask 2,000 Brits:

“ Which of the following US cities would you most like to visit (pick up to 3)?”

We gave respondents a list of the top 25 largest US cities by population, with the options to specify any others or state that they don’t want to visit any.

This is what we found:

As you can see from the chart above:

• New York City is the most popular choice of US city when it comes to prospective British tourism, with close to half ( 41.3%) of Brits saying they would like to visit the city sometime.
• This is closely followed by Los Angeles and Las Vegas , which take the interests of around a quarter of prospective British tourists.

Which Demographics Want to Visit New York City the Most?

We found some variations in potential British visitors to NYC in gender as well as age, and wanted to look at these distinctions to see if anything popped out. Is the big city more popular with men or with women, with young people or older folk?

Here is what we found from our figures:

The desire to travel to NYC appears to be more common in women than in men, though over a third of both genders admit to wanting to visit the Big Apple ( 36.09% of men and 45.59% of women).

Statistics show that the state of New York has a more populous number of women living there than men, with 94 men for every 100 women, giving the state (and by extension the city, since all 5 counties in NYC also have low gender ratios) a lower gender ratio than the national average for the US. So it’s no wonder more women want to visit as well!

The breakdown by age group is as follows:

• The group that seems most enthused at the idea of visiting the Big Apple are the 25-34 year olds, with almost 50% giving it as one of their top three US cities to visit.
• The younger age groups appear more interested in visiting New York City overall – whether this is because older age groups have already been to NYC so they no longer want to go, or because they’re just not interested is unclear from just these results, but we can safely say that young people are the future of tourism in New York !
• Just under a third (31.52%) of 55+ year olds want to visit New York City, as opposed to over a third of every other age group putting NYC as one of their top 3 US cities to visit.

Official New York City Visitor Numbers Over the Years

Looking at data from NYC & Company , we can see figures covering the state of the tourism industry in New York City going back to the 90s, as well as some in-depth figures from the last few years.

We’ve pulled together the data on international and domestic visitors to the New York City from 1991 onwards, to take a look at how the numbers have changed over the years.

Looking at this chart, we can see that:

• The total number of visitors to New York City has increased steadily over the years since 1991, with only small dips in 2001 and 2009 when recessions took place, as well as in 2020 when the COVID 19 pandemic took place and restrictions were put in place.
• In 2020 , the total number of visitors to NYC dropped 67% to 22.3 million .
• Dips in the number of international tourists took place in 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2009, in line with recessions over the years.
• Dips in the number of domestic tourists took place in 1995, 2000 and 2009, in line with recessions over the years.

How Much Do Tourists Typically Spend in New York City?

Once again using data on yearly visitor spending in NYC from NYC & Company , we can see how spending has drastically increased, quadrupling from 1991 up to 2018.

As you can see from the chart:

• In 1991, the total visitor spending in NYC was 10.1 billion USD.
• In 2018 this skyrocketed up to 44 billion USD.
• Looking at the rate of inflation in 2022, $10.1 billion would be around $21 billion. Which is still a large leap in spending over the years, but not quite as dramatic as it appears.
• There were dips in spending in 2001, 2002 and 2009, in line with US recessions.

Visitors from all over the world flock to New York City to take in the iconic sights, eat at the best restaurants in NYC , and visit attractions seen in movies and tv shows. But do some tourists typically spend more money than others?

In the graph above that shows the number of visitors both internationally and domestically in New York City, we can see that international tourists typically are less common in NYC than domestic tourists, but regardless of the number of visitors, it’s the money that helps things stay afloat when it comes to attractions and businesses. And it can certainly be said that visitors from overseas spend more than domestic visitors, with the spending of one international tourist generally being equivalent to that of four domestic tourists!

How Many Hotel Rooms Are In New York City?

Data from a 2020 Department of City Planning Report (NYC Hotel Market Analysis) tells us the number of hotel rooms in New York City year by year as they have grown with the tourist and travel industry.

This is what it tells us:

As we can see from the graph:

• The number of hotel rooms in NYC has increased steadily over the years, with 72,600 rooms in 2006
• This has increased to 127,800 hotel rooms in 2020.

As the city’s tourism industry and number of guests both domestically and internationally has risen over the years, so too has the number of hotel rooms available to said guests.

Airbnb, the award-winning online marketplace for lodging, dominates the short-term rental market in the city, creating an extra hotel market for those with the app. New York City gives Airbnb its largest US market, with about 50,000 Airbnb listings in the city . Data for Airbnb listings is not as readily available as more traditional hotels, but listings in the short-term rental market did decline 11% through September 2020.

The top 10 countries for tourism spending in New York City in 2019 are as follows:

According to figures from NYC & Company , the United Kingdom has historically been the top foreign source of visitors to NYC thanks to strong currency exchange rates over the years, which has allowed more people to go and visit the city even if the UK hasn’t always had the highest average visitor spending per person than other countries.

New York City Tourism Statistics in Search

If we want to find out anything these days whether that be peoples’ opinions on something, where they’d most like to go or even the state of their health, there is one place we can go to for a reliable picture: Google! Millions of us take to the search engine every single day to ask anything and everything about our lives, so we harnessed this power to learn about how people are searching for things relating to travel to New York City.

We used Google Trends and kwfinder.com to find out trending and search volumes over the last few years for a few different phrases that may be searched by someone wishing to travel to NYC.

Here is what we found:

This chart shows high volumes of all three searches, before the noticeable drop indicating the COVID 19 pandemic and the lockdown that was imposed, when travel was prohibited. Since then the numbers appear to have been rising slowly, with a couple of large spikes in 2021 which indicate that people are rearing to get back to New York City for the trip of a lifetime as soon as they are able.

• ‘ Hotels in new york city ’ is clearly the most popular search, though the others mirror the increases and decreases in search volumes at similar times, with dips for all three terms at the beginning of 2020 during the first lockdown, and rises in 2021.
• Searches for ‘hotels in new york city’ took a big hit with a decrease of nearly 80% between February 2020 to April 2020.
• The search term ‘flights to new york city’ had a sudden spike in searches, going from 33,100 in February 2020 to 74,000 in March 2020, before dropping lower.
• This could be due to people trying to get last minute flights before the lockdown was enacted, or trying to get home to NYC before they would be unable to do so.

Post-Pandemic New York City Visitor Statistics

Looking at the numbers in 2020 may feel daunting, and the pandemic may have caused irreparable damage to the hotel industry globally. But looking at the steadily rising figures in 2021, and with the numbers continuing to do so – albeit slowly – in 2022, we are reassured that not all is lost. Whether it’s single travelers searching for a new experience, or parents interested in the best NYC hotels for families , once travel is feasible and the city is running as previous in the near future, it will be booming with tourists and life as we all know and love it once more.

NYC & Company Announces New York City Tourism to Reach 56.4 Million Visitors in 2022

– Strong Recovery Pace Continues as International Visitation Triples Over 2021 – 

– Tourism Industry Contributes Approximately $60 Billion in Economic Impact Supporting the City’s Rebound –

– Week Ending December 10 Sees Strongest Hotel Demand Week of the Year – 

NYC & Company, the official destination marketing organization and convention and visitors bureau for the five boroughs of New York City, today announced that New York City’s economic recovery continued in 2022 with an anticipated 56.4 million travelers arriving in the City by the end of the year—a 71.4% increase over 2021. The City will see 47.4 million domestic and 8.9 million international travelers visit the five boroughs—with international visitation alone more than tripling over 2021. This activity marks the return of 85% of the City’s record 2019 visitation levels; New York City remains on pace to attract 61.7 million visitors in 2023. The pace of tourism’s rebound helps fuel the City’s economic recovery supporting approximately 410,000 jobs in the full leisure and hospitality sector and more than $40 billion in direct visitor spending or approximately $60 billion in total economic impact for the year.

“New York City is not coming back—we are back,” said  New York City Mayor Eric Adams . “After being the hardest hit of any city in the country during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 57 million travelers visited the greatest city in the world this year, and that’s because every day we show more creative energy and success. And thanks to a booming tourism industry, our city continues to be a vital economic engine that supports the nation’s overall recovery, accounting for 410,000 jobs for New Yorkers and $60 billion in economic impact across all five boroughs. We can’t wait to welcome even more visitors in 2023, but I have one message for them all: Spend money!”

“New York City’s economy continues to surge back with thriving tourism as domestic and international travelers seek the magic of the Big Apple,” said  Deputy Mayor for Economic and Workforce Development Maria Torres-Springer . “Continuing to make New York a must-see destination for work or play and supporting our city’s tourism industry is critical to bringing jobs back to pre-pandemic levels.” 

“New York City has always proven itself to be resilient, and we have every reason to remain optimistic about tourism,” said  NYC & Company President and CEO Fred Dixon . “With $40 billion in direct spend and a 71.4% increase in visitation, New York City as a destination has clearly demonstrated that its recovery pace is among the strongest in the country and that normal visitation patterns are returning.” 

“The strength of New York City’s economy has historically been bolstered by a strong tourism sector, which now accounts for 9% of the City’s jobs and supports thousands of businesses citywide,” said  NYC & Company Board Chair and The Shubert Organization Executive Vice President Charles Flateman . “Ongoing investments in transportation, hotels, arts, attractions and other related sectors in the coming years will ensure the City’s growth by reaffirming New York City as a premier destination for business and leisure travel.” 

Several factors contributed to the City’s tourism rebound: throughout 2022, New York City saw a steady return of visitors across all five boroughs with travel activity beginning to return to pre-pandemic patterns. The demand for hotels remained strong and was supported by a steady increase in midweek business travel. Meetings and conventions activity increased citywide with the Javits Center seeing a 15% increase from August to December 2022 as compared to the same period in 2021. In addition, the resumption of airline service routes, the continuation of infrastructure investments throughout the pandemic, and the addition of new tourism offerings, programs and major events across the five boroughs have been critical to attracting visitors back to the City and encouraging spending activity. Tax revenue generated by visitor spending saved each New York City household approximately $2,000 in 2022. 

Hotel performance grew throughout 2022 and is forecast to reach nearly 32 million room nights sold, just 20% below 2019 record levels. New York City is again among the top 25 US markets and was the highest-performing hotel city in the US in November and December 2022. For the week ending December 10, hotel demand recovered 96% of the 2019 benchmark with over 800,000 room nights sold. Hotel occupancy was over 90% and the Average Daily Rate (ADR) was over $400, which translates to a recovery of 124% of 2019 rates.  

Tourism and hospitality-related jobs in accommodations, restaurants, shops, museums, theaters, transportation and attractions across all five boroughs also saw steady improvement—although still below pre-pandemic levels—with a roughly 13% increase .  As of October 2022, there were over 410K people employed in the full leisure and hospitality sector, accounting for 9% of all jobs in the City .  The hotel sector, more specifically, also saw an increase in job strength, reaching 37,300 through October 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   

New York City remains the largest point of entry to the US and a top destination for international travelers. International visitation, which accounts for nearly half of visitor spending, rebounded in 2022 with arrivals tripling over 2021 for a total of nearly 9 million travelers. Western European visitation rebounded significantly in 2022 after travel restrictions were removed at the end of 2021. In addition, travel from South America improved—from Brazil and Colombia in particular. In 2022, New York City’s five largest international markets were the United Kingdom (754,000), Canada (656,000), France (607,000), Brazil (520,000) and Spain (413,000).    

Ongoing investment across New York City’s five boroughs will support ongoing tourism growth. These projects include a multibillion-dollar slate of improvements at LaGuardia, Newark-Liberty and John F. Kennedy airports; a new Moynihan Train Hall; and an expanded Javits Center to host business meetings and conventions. More than 11,000 hotel rooms will be added to the City’s inventory in the next three years and new attractions, museums, tours and other offerings continue to launch across the City. New York City will also benefit from major events in the coming years, including the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop beginning in 2023 and the hosting of the FIFA World Cup in 2026.   

About NYC & Company :  NYC & Company is the official destination marketing organization and convention and visitors bureau for the City of New York, dedicated to maximizing travel and tourism opportunities throughout the five boroughs, building economic prosperity and spreading the positive image of New York City worldwide. For all there is to do and see in New York City, visit  nycgo.com.    

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Travel, Tourism & Hospitality

Travel and tourism in the U.S. - statistics & facts

What are the most popular travel destinations in the u.s., u.s. travel trends, key insights.

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Tourism contribution to GDP in the U.S. 2019-2022

Total travel expenditures in the U.S. 2019-2026

Number of domestic leisure and business trips in the U.S. 2019-2026

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International travel spending in the U.S. 2019-2026

Leading city destinations in the U.S. 2019, by number of international arrivals

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Industry overview.

• Basic Statistic Tourism contribution to GDP in the U.S. 2019-2022
• Premium Statistic Total travel expenditures in the U.S. 2019-2026
• Premium Statistic Direct travel spending in the U.S. 2019-2022, by traveler type
• Basic Statistic Countries that visited the U.S. the most 2019-2022
• Basic Statistic Leading outbound travel markets in the U.S. 2019-2022, country
• Basic Statistic Contribution of travel and tourism to employment in the U.S. 2019-2022
• Premium Statistic Most visited states in the U.S. 2022

Total contribution of travel and tourism to the gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States in 2019 and 2022 (in trillion U.S. dollars)

Total travel spending in the United States from 2019 to 2022, with a forecast until 2026 (in trillion U.S. dollars)

Direct travel spending in the U.S. 2019-2022, by traveler type

Total direct travel spending in the United States from 2019 to 2022, by type of traveler (in billion U.S. dollars)

Countries that visited the U.S. the most 2019-2022

Distribution of international tourist arrivals in the United States in 2019 and 2022, by country

Leading outbound travel markets in the U.S. 2019-2022, country

Distribution of outbound tourist departures in the United States in 2019 and 2022, by country

Contribution of travel and tourism to employment in the U.S. 2019-2022

Contribution of travel and tourism to employment in the United States in 2019 and 2022 (in millions)

Most visited states in the U.S. 2022

Most visited states by adults in the United States as of September 2022

Key players

• Premium Statistic Leading holiday travel provider websites in the U.S. Q2 2023, by share of voice
• Premium Statistic Most downloaded travel apps in the U.S. 2022, by aggregated number of downloads
• Premium Statistic Number of aggregated downloads of leading online travel agency apps in the U.S. 2023
• Basic Statistic American Customer Satisfaction Index for internet travel companies U.S. 2002-2024
• Premium Statistic American Customer Satisfaction Index for hotel companies in the U.S. 2008-2024

Leading holiday travel provider websites in the U.S. Q2 2023, by share of voice

Leading travel brands in the United States in 2nd quarter 2023, by share of voice

Most downloaded travel apps in the U.S. 2022, by aggregated number of downloads

Most downloaded travel apps in the United States in 2022, by aggregated number of downloads (in millions)

Number of aggregated downloads of leading online travel agency apps in the U.S. 2023

Number of aggregated downloads of selected leading online travel agency apps in the United States in 2023 (in millions)

American Customer Satisfaction Index for internet travel companies U.S. 2002-2024

American Customer Satisfaction Index Scores for internet travel companies in the United States from 2002 to 2024

American Customer Satisfaction Index for hotel companies in the U.S. 2008-2024

American Customer Satisfaction Index scores for hotel companies in the United States from 2008 to 2024

• Premium Statistic U.S. hotel and motel industry market size 2012-2022
• Premium Statistic Number of hotel jobs in the U.S. 2019-2022
• Premium Statistic ADR of hotels in the U.S. 2001-2022
• Premium Statistic Occupancy rate of the U.S. hotel industry 2001-2022
• Premium Statistic Revenue per available room of the U.S. hotel industry 2001-2022
• Premium Statistic Change in monthly number of hotel bookings in the U.S. 2020-2023
• Premium Statistic YoY monthly change in number of online hotel searches in the U.S. 2020-2023

U.S. hotel and motel industry market size 2012-2022

Market size of the hotel and motel sector in the United States from 2012 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Number of hotel jobs in the U.S. 2019-2022

Number of hotel jobs in the United States from 2019 to 2022, with a forecast for 2023 (in millions)

ADR of hotels in the U.S. 2001-2022

Average daily rate of hotels in the United States from 2001 to 2022 (in U.S. dollars)

Occupancy rate of the U.S. hotel industry 2001-2022

Occupancy rate of the hotel industry in the United States from 2001 to 2022

Revenue per available room of the U.S. hotel industry 2001-2022

Revenue per available room (RevPAR) of hotel industry in the United States from 2001 to 2022 (in U.S. dollars)

Change in monthly number of hotel bookings in the U.S. 2020-2023

Year-over-year monthly change in number of hotel bookings in the United States from 2020 to 2023

YoY monthly change in number of online hotel searches in the U.S. 2020-2023

Year-over-year monthly change in number of online hotel searches in the United States from 2020 to 2023

Attractions

• Premium Statistic Leading museums by highest attendance worldwide 2019-2022
• Basic Statistic Most visited amusement and theme parks worldwide 2019-2022
• Premium Statistic U.S. amusement park industry market size 2011-2022
• Premium Statistic Landmarks most recommended visitors in the U.S. 2022

Leading museums by highest attendance worldwide 2019-2022

Most visited museums worldwide from 2019 to 2022 (in millions)

Most visited amusement and theme parks worldwide 2019-2022

Leading amusement and theme parks worldwide from 2019 to 2022, by attendance (in millions)

U.S. amusement park industry market size 2011-2022

Market size of the amusement park sector in the United States from 2011 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Landmarks most recommended visitors in the U.S. 2022

Most recommended landmarks by visitors in the United States as of September 2022

City tourism

• Basic Statistic City destinations with the highest direct travel and tourism GDP worldwide 2022
• Premium Statistic World's highest-priced business travel destinations Q4 2022
• Basic Statistic Selected cities with the highest hotel rates in the U.S. as of September 2023
• Basic Statistic Most affordable cities for backpacking in the U.S. 2023, by daily price
• Premium Statistic Average price per night of Airbnb listings in selected U.S. cities 2024
• Premium Statistic Number of Airbnb listings in selected U.S. cities 2024

City destinations with the highest direct travel and tourism GDP worldwide 2022

Leading city tourism destinations worldwide in 2022, ranked by direct contribution of travel and tourism to GDP (in billion U.S. dollars)

World's highest-priced business travel destinations Q4 2022

Most expensive cities for business tourism worldwide in 4th quarter 2022, by average daily costs (in U.S. dollars)

Selected cities with the highest hotel rates in the U.S. as of September 2023

Selected cities with the most expensive hotel rates in the United States as of September 2023 (in U.S. dollars)

Most affordable cities for backpacking in the U.S. 2023, by daily price

Most affordable cities for backpacking in the United States as of January 2023, by daily price (in U.S. dollars)

Average price per night of Airbnb listings in selected U.S. cities 2024

Average price per night of Airbnb listings in selected cities in the United States as of February 2024 (in U.S. dollars)

Number of Airbnb listings in selected U.S. cities 2024

Number of Airbnb listings in selected cities in the United States as of February 2024

Sustainable tourism

• Premium Statistic Travelers who find sustainable travel important in the U.S. 2022
• Premium Statistic Share of travelers that plan to make sustainable travel choices in the U.S. 2022
• Premium Statistic How much more travelers would pay to make a trip more sustainable in the U.S. 2022
• Premium Statistic U.S. consumers who have paid extra for sustainable travel in the past two years 2022
• Premium Statistic U.S. consumers willing to pay extra for a sustainable travel provider 2022
• Premium Statistic Share of U.S. travelers that feel guilty over non-eco-friendly past travel 2022
• Premium Statistic Reasons travelers were against staying in sustainable hotels in the U.S. 2022

Travelers who find sustainable travel important in the U.S. 2022

Share of travelers that think sustainable travel is important in the United States as of February 2022

Share of travelers that plan to make sustainable travel choices in the U.S. 2022

Share of travelers that intend to make more sustainable travel decisions in the United States as of March 2022

How much more travelers would pay to make a trip more sustainable in the U.S. 2022

Extra cost travelers would be willing to pay to make a trip more carbon friendly in the United States as of March 2022

U.S. consumers who have paid extra for sustainable travel in the past two years 2022

Share of consumers that have paid extra for sustainable travel in the past two years in the United States as of February 2022

U.S. consumers willing to pay extra for a sustainable travel provider 2022

Share of consumers willing to pay extra for a sustainable travel provider in the United States as of February 2022

Share of U.S. travelers that feel guilty over non-eco-friendly past travel 2022

Share of travelers that experience guilt over past trips not being sustainable in the United States as of August 2022

Reasons travelers were against staying in sustainable hotels in the U.S. 2022

Reasons travelers were against staying in a hotel with sustainable practices in the United States as of August 2022

• Premium Statistic Priorities when choosing a leisure travel destination in the U.S. 2023, by generation
• Premium Statistic Leading destinations travelers intend to visit in the next 12 months in the U.S. 2023
• Premium Statistic Trust in travel and hospitality brands in the U.S. 2023, by brand type
• Premium Statistic American Customer Satisfaction Index: travel and tourism industries in the U.S. 2023

Priorities when choosing a leisure travel destination in the U.S. 2023, by generation

Main factors for choosing a leisure travel destination among adults in the United States as of May 2023, by generation

Leading destinations travelers intend to visit in the next 12 months in the U.S. 2023

Leading leisure travel destinations travelers intend to go to in the next 12 months in the United States as of September 2023

Trust in travel and hospitality brands in the U.S. 2023, by brand type

Level of trust in travel and hospitality brands in the United States as of September 2023, by brand type

American Customer Satisfaction Index: travel and tourism industries in the U.S. 2023

American Customer Satisfaction Index for the travel and tourism sector in the United States in 2023, by industry

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Flooding Inundates Kenya, Killing at Least 32 and Displacing Thousands

Heavy rains also pounded other nations in East Africa, including Tanzania, where at least 155 people were killed, according to the country’s prime minister.

Residents in Nairobi were stranded on Tuesday after a night of heavy rainfall. Credit... Daniel Irungu/EPA, via Shutterstock

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By Abdi Latif Dahir and Jesus Jiménez

Abdi Latif Dahir reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and Jesus Jiménez from New York.

• April 24, 2024

Days of torrential rains have pummeled parts of Kenya, leaving at least 32 dead, 15 injured and more than 40,000 people displaced, according to officials. The flooding has killed nearly 1,000 farm animals and destroyed thousands of acres of crops, with more rain expected across the country in the coming days.

The rains began in March during what is known in the country as the “long rains,” but intensified over the past week, according to the Kenya Meteorological Department .

Heavy rains have also pounded other nations across East Africa. In Tanzania, at least 155 people were killed and 236 others injured from the relentless rain that has swept several parts of the country in recent days, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Thursday.

The rains affected some 200,000 people, Mr. Majaliwa added, and caused damage to farms, bridges, roads, schools and places of worship. The Tanzania Meteorological Authority warned that heavy rains and strong winds would continue to pummel several towns and cities, including the port city of Dar es Salaam.

In Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where some of the country’s heaviest rain has fallen, more than 30,000 people have been displaced, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs . On Tuesday, 18 people there were stranded and later rescued, including seven children, the Kenya Red Cross Society said.

Edwin Sifuna, the Nairobi County senator, said on social media that the local government there was “clearly overwhelmed,” and he called on the federal government for help.

“The situation in Nairobi has escalated to extreme levels,” he wrote in a post that included a video of people stranded on rooftops surrounded by floodwaters.

Kithure Kindiki, cabinet secretary for the Interior Ministry, said in a social media post on Thursday that several government agencies were beginning a joint operation to assist the victims, conduct rescues and evacuate those who remain at risk.

The heavy rains on Wednesday forced Kenya Railways to suspend commuter train services. The Kenya Urban Roads Authority also partially closed four major roads in Nairobi and warned of heavy flooding along several major highways in the capital and in the coastal city of Mombasa.

The rains were not expected to subside over the next few days, according to the Kenya Meteorological Department, which had rain in the forecast for parts of the country, including Nairobi, through Monday. The agency also warned of a high likelihood of breakouts of diseases such as malaria and diarrhea in some areas.

The latest downpours come just months after torrential rains and floods killed dozens of people and displaced thousands more nationwide.

Here are photographs of the flooding in Kenya:

A flooded river in Mathare, a sprawling shantytown in Nairobi where many live in tin shacks.

Swimming through floodwaters to try to rescue people stranded in their homes in Mathare. Most of those displaced in Nairobi live in informal settlements, according to the United Nations.

Residents of Mathare tried to salvage goods from their homes. Many people in Nairobi live in high-density areas that lack proper roads, water or power infrastructure.

Residents in Mathare trying to clear muddy water from their homes. Missing or blocked drainage systems have been blamed for exacerbating the floods.

Clinging to buses and trucks to avoid flooded roads in Nairobi.

Homes in several neighborhoods across the capital were submerged, leading to evacuations.

The torrential rains affected almost half of Kenya’s 47 counties, according to the United Nations.

Using a boat to traverse floodwaters in the Githurai area of Nairobi.

Flooding inundated entire roadways in Machakos County, about 35 miles southeast of Nairobi.

The swollen Athi River. The river burst its banks and flooded homes in Machakos County, officials said.

Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent for The Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He covers a broad range of issues including geopolitics, business, society and arts. More about Abdi Latif Dahir

Jesus Jiménez covers breaking news, online trends and other subjects. He is based in New York City. More about Jesus Jiménez

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