Tourism picking up at Times Square
tourists, but are part of the city’s entertainment ecosystem.
Sam Vasili’s Shoe Repair reopened last month across 51st Street from the Gershwin Theater, where it had operated for three decades before a long pandemic closure.
Owner Sam Smolyar was all grins on a recent afternoon as he shared the news that a Broadway production set to reopen nearby had requisitioned his help. For years, he helped outfit the Rockettes with custom-fitted boots. “We rely on the theater, and on the businesses around here,” he said.
He hopes more people buying tickets on Broadway will mean busier times.
“It starts to get better,” said Vasili, who employs three people at the shop.
Just before the COVID19 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
March when they bought tickets for the Broadway musical Hadestown, despite being uncertain about when they’d be allowed to travel to the United States.
“That was the true gamble because we bought the tickets for tonight, without any knowledge if we were going to be able to come here,” Leon said.
NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, is spending millions of dollars overseas to draw tourists back. It 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.
“We’re hoping to do everything we can to accelerate that timeline,” said Chris Heywood, the agency’s executive vice president.
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.”
The return of annual traditions like New York City’s big Thanksgiving parade and the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration could attract more visitors.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has also announced a $450 million initiative to help revitalize the tourism industry.
On a recent day, William Brownstein hawked comedy club tickets to passersby who might now be ready to laugh off the months of grim news.
“With all the crazy things going on” — with Republicans and Democrats, with pro- and antivaccine viewpoints — “you got to laugh about it,” said Brownstein, who returned from his unplanned hiatus in May, soon after comedy clubs were allowed to reopen.
“I think as time progresses, we will see a lot more people come,” he predicted. “It’s just going to take a little time, but they will be back like they were before.”
‘Between the return of Broadway, the return of international tourists, we really expect to be at those prepandemic numbers sooner than most people predict.’
– Tom Harris, Times Square Alliance