Don Shearer (Travelbiz) explores NYC with Fred Dixon, President and CEO New York City Tourism & Conventions.

As part of the Irish Trade partner delegation with New York City Tourism + Conventions delegation, Don took the opportunity to catch up with Fred Dixon President of New York City Tourism & Conventions,

Fred and the New York City Tourism & Conventions team represent all five boroughs in New York City which includes, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx, Fred stressed the importance of the five boroughs and how they are building tourism equity across communities in New York City.

“Aprox 82% of our international travellers stayed in New York City last year only, they didn’t go to New York and Las Vegas or New York and Florida they only came to New York City. What does that tell you?  New York is a tremendous city break destination that people are familiar with and they’re coming back more and more to explore more and more. So that’s where Irish trade and media partners come in. You’re hugely helpful in the way and we want to continue to grow that number, we’re happy to partner with travellers going to Las Vegas and Florida, but it tells you a little bit about the mindset of your customers, it’s unique, they come here, they go deep and we want them to come back often.”

We talked about NYC representing the five boroughs and with the Irish delegation exploring upper Manhattan and Queens, in addition to doing some other exciting things including going to the opera, one of Fred’s favorite things to do.

“You work with a lot of DM’s around the world of course, there’s a couple of things that are unique about us. We have an enormous in-house creative content team; we produce a lot of our home great content winning 3 Emmy Awards in the last three years which is remarkable for the great content that we’ve done. A huge thank you to Nancy for her leadership and our amazing content team. We also do licensing for the city of New York. It’s a bit unique as we manage the brand of the city of New York, the chunkier my NYC that you see on the side of taxis throughout the city is a good example. We also work with a global licensing company for the brand NYPD.

62 million visitors is the official number for last year which equates to 74 billion $USD in economic impact, 103% up over 2019 with tax revenues of about $6.2 billion and 380,000 jobs. To support this, we are going to go even higher this year, so tourism is big business in New York City and that’s why we’re going to see such great engagement this week.

The latest forecast that we just released with our members last week at our annual meeting shows we’re expecting 65 million visitors back to New York City in 2024, well on our way back to that record performance in 2019.

A little over 13 million will be international and the balance of course would be domestic. How’s the business is split leisure versus business travel, so 12.6 million business travelers are expected this year in 2024, about a million from the record high of 13.6 in 2019. We know business travel is taking a little bit longer to recover, but I’m happy to report that group is doing really well. We expect to be 97% of the way back in terms of visitor volume this year and over 102% by next year. You see across the board, international is outpacing domestic travel slightly in its recovery which is great news. Ireland is back to 2019 levels recording almost 300,000 travellers in 2023 with the UK at 1.2m.

One of our greatest strengths overall is that New York City remains the number one gateway into the United States between Newark and JFK and the international flights that go into LaGuardia. We are currently enjoying 3,000 international flights a week amounting to almost 600,000 seats. 833 flights a week departing to Europe and then the area where we have most recovery of course is no surprise is Aisa, we had a significant number of flights to China direct service we had over 70 a week to China and today we’re about 12, so we’ve got some ground to make up there. The international market is strong into New York NY as the number one gateway into America.

Fred also spoke about costs and resulting trends in NYC.

“It’s no surprise that retail is relatively flat also not surprising restaurant and dining, hotels and lodging prices have increased. Food and groceries, this is a really interesting one to me, you know what that says to me bodegas, people go to the corner food market, grocery store when they get here, they’re buying groceries and taking them back to their accommodation. People are doing more of that as it might be a way to save some money and I think potentially they can do more Broadway do more attractions.

Transportation is down a little bit which includes, Ubers, taxis, airport transfers, buses etc. Maybe people are walking more, maybe they’re riding on the subway, well, we’re not exactly sure what’s driving this, but we do know that entertainment is key, and people want to be entertained, they want to have a great time, so these are always really telling statistics and trends with some interesting insights for you to share with your colleagues.

How’s the hotel industry doing overall. 2023 we ended at almost 82% occupancy, very strong on our way back to performance levels from 2019 – 5% off there from 2019, up on prior year demand, 36 million that’s still down about 10% from 2019 up 7% over prior year. Rates, like they are in every destination I think across the world are a little bit higher than they were. 21% up over 2019 average rate @$297 dollars up 11% over prior year.

The value in New York is in January February and with milder winters you can come in Jan Feb and have a spring fall experience. You never know what you’re going to get but it’s a really wonderful time to come to New York with hotel occupancy at 70% down 5% from 2019, so significantly more value to avail of in January and February as a result.”

Travelbiz will bring you more updates from NYC &Company over the coming weeks including a full schedule of World Leading sporting events taking place in New York including the World Cup in 2026!

New York City Tourism + Conventions is the official destination marketing organization (DMO) and convention and visitors bureau (CVB) 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. For all there is to do and see in New York City, visit www.nyctourism.com