8.2M Holiday Tourists Expected in City

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The New York Sun

New York City will have a record 8.2 million holiday visitors this season – and they will spend $450 billion – the city’s official tourism marketing organization, NYC & Company, predicts.The low dollar, inexpensive travel, and growing trendiness of visiting New York have all contributed to this increase, the president of NYC & Company, Cristyne Nicholas, told The New York Sun yesterday.

“It’s going to be a green Christmas,” she said, referring to the city’s predicted profits.

NYC & Company defines the holiday season as November and December, so as to include Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, and other seasonal travel.

In 2004, 8 million holiday tourists visited New York City,according to NYC & Company data. The predicted increase would be part of a general trend: 400,000 more tourists came to the city during the holiday season in 2004 than in 2003, which itself saw 400,000 more visitors come for the holidays than in 2000, the last season before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Though 85% of tourists generally come to New York from elsewhere in America, tourists from abroad account for 45% of the total spending, according to NYC & Company data. This season, 6.97 million of New York’s holiday visitors this season are expected to be domestic tourists, and 1.23 million international.

New York’s transportation agencies predict higher traffic volume as well.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects that 1.5 million passengers will pass through the city’s three airports over Thanksgiving weekend, a 5% increase from last year, and a spokesman, Allan Hicks, said the increase was expected to carry through the December holidays. New York City Transit reported on Tuesday that the average number of weekday subway and bus riders reached 7.5 million in September,the highest average daily ridership since June 1971. A spokesman for New York City Transit, Charles Seaton, predicted that this number would go up even further over the holidays.

“We expect to see additional ridership through people visiting and through the MTA’s holiday bonus plan,” he said.For retail,the season looks promising across New York State,according to a spokeswoman for the Retail Council of New York State, Rebecca Marion.

“There was a lot of doom and gloom coming into the season, but it looks like that was a little premature,” she said, adding that stores had reported good sales, despite the unseasonable warmth. “Normally, it takes a good blast of cold weather to get people thinking about the holidays,but retail has been strong so far, even though the weather has been good.”

Her predictions match the national trend. The National Retail Federation expects that holiday retail sales will total $435.3 billion, an increase of 5% over last year, a prediction supported by the 7.2% monthly growth in October, a spokesman, Scott Krugman, said.

Despite a reported decline in consumer confidence, Mr. Krugman said, “consumers have shown the ability to spend. … We didn’t really think consumer spending was that bad.”

The Travel Industry Association of America, a trade group, predicts that industry growth will be slow in the last quarter of 2005, though, it says, domestic leisure travel will rise by 4% for the year, and international travel to America by 7%.


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