The city's convention and visitors bureau is projecting that NYC tourism will take several years to bounce back from the pandemic.
NYC & Company released a new report that plots out the next five years of travel-to-NYC trends. There were 66.6 million visitors to the city in 2019, but tourism will drop by about 66% this year to 22.9 million visitors, and is only expected to be near pre-pandemic heights by 2024, with an estimated 65 million visitors in 2024, and then 69.2 million in 2025.
Last year had been a banner year for tourism in the city, with 2019 the 10th straight year of record tourism growth. Nearly 400,000 jobs and $70 billion in "economic activity" are attributed to tourism, according to the 2019 NYC & Company annual report. (In a 2018 report, NYC & Company offered an outlook with 68.9 million visitors in 2020 and 71.2 million in 2021.)
In its new outlook, NYC & Company wrote, "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 spring-early summer. If the health breakthroughs align with lifting restrictions on activities and gatherings the pace may move more quickly." (Tourism has tanked around the world due the pandemic.)
"It’s going to be a very slow build initially," Fred Dixon, NYC & Company CEO, told the NY Times.
Some cultural institutions have begun to slowly reopen with limited capacity, like museums. However, concerts and sporting events are not yet open to fans in New York, and Broadway announced last month that it won't reopen until June 2021.
"With nearly 97,000 workers who rely on Broadway for their livelihood and an annual economic impact of $14.8 billion to the city, our membership is committed to re-opening as soon as conditions permit us to do so," Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin said in a statement in October. "We are working tirelessly with multiple partners on sustaining the industry once we raise our curtains again."
Dixon explained to the Times, "Many [tourists] look at Broadway as the dinner bell. As soon as that dinner bell rings, people are going to come far and wide."
International visitors have been making up 20% of tourists in recent years, with most coming from the U.K., China, and Brazil, but international travelers won't be that prominent until 2025, NYC & Company says. The report adds, "It is worth noting that international travel after September 11th, 2001 took fully four years to recover."
NYC & Company launched a staycation campaign a few months ago, encouraging New Yorkers to go out and spend their money in the city. A couple from Queens, Susan and Dustin, brought their children to a relatively quiet Times Square in September to do just that. Dustin told Gothamist, "It’s definitely not as busy, not the same, but actually kind of nice, because normally it’s so crowded. Midtown is very empty, but it’s also nice to be out here without crowds and crowds of tourists."
"Like today, the line to Krispy Kreme would have normally taken hours, and we hardly waited," Susan added.
Reporting by Sai Mokhtari
