New York’s tourism industry, hard hit in the pandemic, is approaching “a full recovery” as the city's tourism marketing arm reported the visitor level this year has reached 97% of its record-setting level pre-pandemic — thanks partly to travelers from the United Kingdom and Canada.
The city is expected to have hosted 64.3 million travelers by the end of 2024, just shy of the record-setting 2019 visitation level of nearly 67 million, New York City Tourism + Conventions said in a study released Friday.
This year’s visitor count is the second highest in New York’s history, Mayor Eric Adams said.
Not only do the numbers help bolster the city's tax revenue, but they are closely watched in the commercial real estate industry as a high-visitor turnout translates into more potential revenue for property tenants and landlords.
The international visitor count in 2024 likely will have totaled 13 million but accounted for about half of the tourist spending in the city. The tourism arm said it’s seen “growth from historically strong markets, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico and Western Europe.”
The United Kingdom remains the largest source of international travelers, at 1.1 million visitors, followed by Canada, at about 1 million, the study found. France, Brazil and Italy round out the top five, with more than 700,000 visitors each, followed by China with 609,000 visitors.
The number of domestic visitors totaled 51.3 million, just 2 million shy of the 2019 benchmark, led by travelers from the New York tristate area, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Boston and Los Angeles, according to the study.
The number of business travelers, which is expected to total 12.5 million this year, will grow to 13.1 million in 2025 before topping the pre-pandemic levels in 2026 “due to the economic constraints and the shifting attitudes about face-to-face meetings,” New York City Tourism + Conventions said.
The business traveler count totaled 13.6 million in 2019 and 11.8 million in 2023, a spokesperson told CoStar News.