joining us now to discuss the economic impact of holiday
tourism in the big Apple is Greg. David contributor
at the city. Greg, thanks so much for
joining us today. How much of an uptick in
tourism is the city seeing this holiday season and what's
really causing it? Well, we don't have specific
numbers for the holiday season, but if you look
at the big picture for the year, tourism almost
doubled in new york in 2022. Compared with last
year, we expect about 56 57 million tourists to
visit the city. I was at Rockefeller Center for
the Rockets earlier in december and it was sold out
at 10 a.m. In the morning. So that's a
pretty good sign. Yeah, Greg. And of
course, we know that cheap airline tickets are obviously
not a factor in people's plans because they're very expensive
this year. But when we're speaking about industries benefiting
from the revival and tourism, which industries are benefiting
most? Well, of course, is what's crucial
for New York is the leisure and hospitality industries,
restaurants, hotels. This had grown to be one
of our most important industries, accounting for more than
300,000 jobs in the city was devastated in the pandemic
and is coming back but is still much below pre
pandemic levels. And that's because we have a ways
to go. 56 million tourists. It sounds good
, but in our peak year of 2019, we
had 66 million tourists. And one of the ways
to see what the problem is is the percentage of
domestic tourists were going to be about 90 we were
About 90% domestic tourists last year were about 85% this
year. What we are missing is international tourists,
especially from China who had become the second largest group
of international visitors to New York. And all you
have to do is walk around the streets to see
. There aren't too many Chinese tourists these days.
Yeah, Greg, good point there. I'm wondering
if we might see a change in that moving forward
. As of course, china does relax some of
its zero covid policies here. But let's move to
the most sought after tourist attractions. What our visitors
looking to see this holiday season. Well, you
know what's interesting about that is new york is not
Orlando, new york is not a one thing place
. So people are coming to see the christmas stuff
to go to Rockefeller Center, but they're also coming
to do museums. Uh museums get almost half their
visitors from abroad. Broadway is a great attraction for
visitors year in and year out. And of course
a lot of people will be checking into new york
this week to be in Times Square for the great
celebration. Now as of course, the pandemic kind
of drags on here, we have seen even,
you know, holdouts like China start to relax their
covid policies as I mentioned. So looking ahead,
what's your outlook for tourism in 2023, do you
think we could actually get back to the levels that
we had pre pandemic next year? No, nobody
thinks we're going to make it quite back that far
. The official forecast is 62 million tourists. If
things change in China, maybe that'll push it up
. But like the rest of the New York City
recovery, we're not making it back to pre pandemic
levels in 2023. We have to wait till 2024
. All right, Greg, and we will be
waiting anxiously for that. That's Greg, David contributor
at the city.