The weak dollar has been a strong asset to the city’s tourist-based economy.

The math is simple. After trading at par two years ago, the dollar reached a historic low against the euro last week, making European visitors to the city feel richer than their countrymen stranded at home, where a euro saved is merely a euro earned.

Yesterday, one euro bought $1.3438, just shy of Friday’s high of $1.3460, making Cedric Lellouche, a 22-year-old car salesman from Paris, a richer man than usual. He was in the downtown store of J&R Computer yesterday looking to add some video games to a recent purchase of a digital camera, which he bought at B&H Photo on Ninth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. He was so excited with his purchase he called his brother in France.

“And I asked my brother to see how much it is in France,” he said. “The same camera, same model, was 200 euro more.”

His savings: about $268.

While a number of factors drive the tourist economy, including increased business travel, seasonal attractions such as Christmas shopping, and the perennial destination value of the city, the strength of foreign currencies against the dollar – primarily the euro and the British pound – have had a “profound positive effect on international tourism,” said the president and chief executive officer of the city’s tourism marketing organization, NYC & Company, Cristyne Nicholas.

Hotel occupancy, a major barometer measuring the tourism economy’s health, is near record levels set during the waning days of the last economic boom in 2000, according to a hospitality industry consultant, John Fox of PKF Consulting. His firm tracks hotel business on a monthly basis. Foreign arrivals to the area’s major airports are also up 13% compared to last year and relative to domestic arrivals, which are up 10%, he said.

Through October, New York hotels were at an occupancy rate of 82.2%, which is up from 74.7% this time last year. In October, typically the peak month for hotels, occupancy rates hit a high of 89%, surpassing expectations of both domestic and foreign occupancy, Ms. Nicholas said.

A spokesman for the New York State Restaurant Association, Steven C. Sullivan, said the group did not have numbers for domestic and foreign spending in city restaurants. But his membership is up, he said.

“It will be a little more evident down the road,” Mr. Sullivan said. As long as the dollar does not rebound, word will spread in Europe about the power of the euro in New York. “That’s when you see the bounce.”

Strong foreign currencies have had a two-fold effect.

“One, it makes New York a good venue for foreign tourists and foreign venues bad for U.S. tourists,” Mr. Fox said. “So New York, as a domestic destination, benefits from that, too.”

A November report published by the tourism bureau in London, England, said sales in every sector except clothing “seem to have been hit hard by reduced North American visitor spending.”

Instead, Mr. Fox said, Americans are traveling domestically. Deals offered last week by JetBlue, for instance, gave Marcia Pearson from Sandpoint, Idaho, the chance to make her inaugural trip to the city for $136 round trip.

“I always wanted to come to New York City, but now its affordable,” she said.

Standing outside the W Times Square hotel, Aimee Harris and her friend Connie Robin, said they left their husbands and children to come for a girls-only visit to New York.

“Compared to London, New York looks like a good deal,” Ms. Robin, 46, said. “And we just had a $25 sandwich.”

The two women came not just to shop – with two finicky teenage daughters, Christmas shopping is best done when returns are not long distance, Ms. Harris, 48, said. They came to take in the city’s sights, sounds and, shows, mainly off-Broadway

“We’re looking for Mama Mia tickets but they can’t seem to be had,” Ms. Harris said.

Major theaters have had their best season in years, a spokesman from The League of American Theatres and Producers, Inc., Alan Cohen, said. The group will publish a detailed report in mid-January, but Mr. Cohen said sales of tickets to foreign theatergoers is up.

Mom and pop shops, while harder to gauge, may not be feeling the trickledown effect of tourist dollars, at least not at Paramount Electronics near the bustle of Times Square.

“A small percentage is trickling down, but its nothing extraordinary,” said the store’s manager, Rick Benz.

Yesterday, the mood at his store was worlds away from the frenetic activity of the Apple Store in SoHo and J &R Computers downtown.

A J&R spokesman, Abe Brown, said the store was seeing waves of tourists and that sales of typical products – digital cameras, iPods, and computers – were “way up from previous years.”

As European Union leaders fret about the effect a strong euro will have on European exports, Gunnar Folasen from Norway, who came to the city with Norwegian kroners in his pocket, was happy to spend them. He stood outside with his wife,

“We considered bringing an extra suitcase and expanding the Christmas shopping,” Mr. Folasen, 35, said.