City Opens Tourism Office in Australia

The city's tourism and marketing association, NYC & Co., is opening an office in Sydney, Australia, to promote travel to New York City, officials announced yesterday.

New York City is the top American travel destination for Australians, and an estimated 230,000 visited the city in 2007, up from 216,000 in 2006. Australian visitors stay, on average, between 9 and 10 nights in New York and spend an average of $280 per person each day.

Tourism is the city's third largest industry and brought in an estimated $28 billion in 2007. The Australia office is the 17th international office of NYC & Co.

Earlier this month, NYC & Co. opened its first office in Canada, the city's second-largest tourism market behind Britain. An estimated 880,000 Canadian tourists visited New York last year.

In 2007, a record-breaking 46 million tourists were estimated to have visited New York City.