tourism

Tourists Flock To NYC and Spend Record Amounts

Earlier this week it was widely reported that in 2007 New York City had been visited by a record numbers of tourists who had spent record amounts of money here. Covering this announcement (by Mayor Bloomberg in his weekly radio program), the NY SUN reports that this phenomenon was interpreted by the deputy mayor for economic development and rebuilding, Robert Lieber, as being the result of a combination of factors, including increased investment in the city's cultural institutions, the attraction of New York's restaurants, a marketing effort abroad, and the low value of the dollar to foreign currencies.

Clearly, this has been a boon for a city that was down on visitor numbers following the 9/11 attacks due to the perception that the city (because of terrorism and nascent crime rates) was unsafe to visit. Last year tourism increased by 5% over 2006 with an estimated 46 million tourists who spent something in the region of $28 billion during their stays. A daily visit to Midtown Manhattan around lunchtime would inform the casual observer that there are almost as many tourists as business people with Italian, Spanish, French, German and British English mixing with the stressed cries of New Yorkers on their cellphones and the tap-tap, beep-beep of Blackberries.

An unusually favorable exchange rate with the Euro and British Pound (not to mention the Canadian and Australian dollars) certainly accounts for much of the visitors spending their money and getting as much as twice the value for it they would get at home, but from a Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York perspective it's interesting that in this time when many New Yorkers are finding living in their own city harder and harder to afford, visitors from abroad are flocking here and spending record sums in our stores and restaurants.

Is this situation set to continue? Or will rising dollar exchange rates reduce the number of foreign tourists? Is this disparity in spending/buying power a livability issue? And, if so, what is the solution?