Bit by bit bustle returning to NYC
Still-missing hordes of foreign tourists limiting recovery
NEW YORK — Times Square has long stood as an emblem of New York’s hustle and bustle. But as Broadway theaters shut their doors and the city became an early epicenter of the global pandemic, nine in 10 businesses in the area closed, according to a district civic group, The Times Square Alliance.
“We really were a symbol to the world of the pandemic and the pause,” said Tom Harris, the alliance’s president.
Three-fourths of area businesses have since reopened, bit by bit, as Broadway shows began reopening to vaccinated-only audiences. Among those hopefully restarting are businesses that don’t cater directly to tourists, but are part of the city’s entertainment ecosystem.
David Cohen has been yearning for a return to the days when business boomed at his family’s souvenir shop in Times Square.
While tourists have begun returning, foot traffic into Grand Slam souvenirs is still not what it was before the coronavirus pandemic, when hordes of global visitors crowded under the canopy of electric billboards just outside his door.
But the return of foreign tourists to a place popularly called the crossroads of the world may help hasten recovery for businesses like his — many of them mom-andpop shops — that collectively employ thousands of people and serve as one of New York City’s most important economic engines.
Just before the covid-19 outbreak, New York City was posting record numbers of tourists — 66.6 million in 2019, including 13.5 million from outside the U.S. Then the pandemic prompted severe restrictions on foreign travel.
A marketing blitz has been underway for months to remind Americans that New York City is again open for business and ready for the visiting masses. Now the city is expanding its outreach to those outside the U.S., who are especially coveted because they spend more time and more money during their visits.
While domestic travel accounted for 80% of visitors, foreign tourists account for about half of the city’s tourism spending and typically represent half of all hotel bookings.
Harris of the Times Square Alliance said the district is already rebounding. Since May, he said, the number of pedestrians counted in some places has grown from 150,000 per day to as many as 250,000 — still far below the roughly 365,000 people who tramped through the grid of streets before the pandemic.
NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, is spending millions of dollars overseas to draw tourists back. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has also announced a $450 million initiative to help revitalize the tourism industry.
The tourism agency projects 2.8 million foreign visitors by the end of the year, a sliver of the 13.5 million who visited in 2019. With borders reopened, officials hope the number of visitors will steadily rise over the next few years and again reach record levels within the next four years.
The campaign is initially focused on Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and parts of Europe, but will likely expand into other countries — possibly into China, a particularly lucrative market because Chinese visitors significantly outspend other nationalities.
Chinese visitors, however, may decide to stay put for now because of quarantining requirements back home — at least two weeks when returning from an overseas trip.
“Daytrips and domestic tourists are helping Broadway, museums and restaurants, but New York can’t reach our pre-pandemic level of visitors until international tourism returns in full,” New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said.
“Reopening America’s borders is a big help, but other factors, beyond our control, make it hard to see when we’ll get back to the numbers we had before the world shut down.”