Results tagged “Tourism”

Did that New Jersey storefront on the Upper West Side get you across the Hudson to check out some foliage? The NY Times reports from the state's temporary Manhattan outpost (which is still up and running), saying that it's not about competition or stealing Manhattanites away (was that really ever a fear?).

The sneaky state of New Jersey has quietly made its way into a storefront on the Upper West Side; opening a pop-up tourism store on West 73rd and Columbus that is suspiciously devoid of Bon Jovi, the Boss, scrunchies and mall references.

The Times Square Alliance has started rolling out the upgraded look of the pedestrian malls that have taken over the center of the city with brand new seating and even some greenery to really get tourists in the true lounging spirit. The Alliance said that the new seats were "more typical of outdoor furniture" and the Post is calling them "classy." And what screams classy more than sitting inside a giant baseball glove chair? (Let's hope that Beetlejuice doesn't find his way over to the Theater District!) Also arriving at the closed-off sections of Broadway to replace the original eyesore, death trap lawn chairs are silver benches made for two, so get ready to catch some PDA in your periphery while averting your eyes from the Naked Cowboy. The center of the roadway also now will have a Zelkova or oak trees surrounded by "dozens of other small plants." Not everyone loves the new European look though, with one woman from Austin telling the Post, "I wanted to see taxi-to-taxi gridlock and grittiness. I didn't expect to see trees in the middle of the street." Great, now even tourists want the nasty old Times Square back.

Citing the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, city officials are hoping to make NYC's gay history and culture a compelling reason for gay tourists to visit the Big Apple: Today they launched a new $1.9 million marketing campaign, "Rainbow Pilgrimage," hoping to make visiting NYC seem like a "a ‘rite of passage’ for the gay and lesbian traveler," according to City Room. The city's tourism marketing website now has a gay section, nycgo.com/gay which offers suggestions on things to do and a list of gay landmarks. University of Illinois at Chicago professor of history and gender and women's studies John D'Emilio remarked to CityRoom, "Forty-plus years ago, a newspaper like The New York Times had front-page articles alerting the city to the growing problem of ‘overt homosexuality.' Within living memory, something has been turned around. People who were seen as an unwelcome presence are now encouraged to arrive." Here's a Stonewall riots podcast from the Bowery Boys.

The city announced that an estimated 47 million people visited NYC this year. The number is a new record high (last year, there were 46 million visitors) and the city also estimates that the tourists spent $30 billion (another record--last year tourists brought in $28.9 billion). However, with the recession, the increase of tourists was only 2%, small compared to the 5% uptick between 2006 and 2007. Mayor Bloomberg was optimistic, "While we can't promise that we will hit another record next year, I do think we'll continue to see a lot of tourists on our streets." He spoke at Rockefeller Center, where CityRoom reports some students from Medford (Mass.) High School cheered him on: "Mr. Bloomberg thanked all of them for coming and said, 'We love you; go spend some money,' before he went on his way."

In recent years, as the dollar weakened, tourism remained high and helped bolster the city's economy. However, the faltering economy's repercussions are starting to hurt the hotel sector. The Marriott Marquis's general manager tells Crain's, "The financial markets have scared off a lot of different companies that we do business with.” And a budget hotel operator tells the Times, "There’s hesitancy in bookings. We hold our breath and fill up rooms at the last minute. Occupancy has been weaker in October, traditionally one of the strongest months.” The hotel industry is reiterating their opposition to any hotel tax hike, but given the hard times, it's possible the City Council might try to pass one--City Councilman Lew Fidler says an extra $70 million/year could be raised, "The idea of not reaching into the pocket of foreign tourists before reaching into the pocket of New Yorkers is offensive."

Forget about living there for a second, right now Mayor Bloomberg just wants you to think of Staten Island as a nice place to visit (baby steps). With all the sudden hype around the borough (a music festival, anti-gentrification graffiti), could 2008 be the year it sheds the bad stigma (and stench) it's known for? The NY Sun reports on the Mayor's initiative to encourage New Yorkers to take a staycation on the Island, making it not only the new Williamsburg, but the new Hamptons?

Mayor Bloomberg came out strongly against a proposed 8% hotel tax, saying that tourism was NYC's proverbial golden goose and that taxing it to death would be the wrong move. The additional tourist tax was proposed in the City Council by members who are trying to figure out how to avoid slashing $450 million from the Dept. of Education's budget next year.

         

The elegant 7th floor roof garden at Rockefeller Plaza is usually off limits, but for the next two evenings the general public is invited up to sip cocktails while savoring the twilight view. The only catch is that you have to absorb a lot of information about Canada, because our northern neighbor's tourism board is the one footing the bill. But since their national sales pitch comes with free food, music, drinks and hand massages, who's complaining?

Though a huge development project near and dear to his heart suffered a major blow, Mayor Bloomberg is rallying the city's fortunes by visiting Europe. Yesterday, the mayor was in Belfast, visiting the Titantic Quarter and mixing up City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's family history (he said her mother--when it was actually her grandmother--who survived the Titanic, which was built in Belfast). Bloomberg, who gave Belfast Mayor Jim Rodgers a crystal apple (from Tiffany) to represent NYC, said, "There are 8.2m New Yorkers who all told me to say hello from them and for all of you to visit New York and spend lots of money."

Chashama and Chris Rubino team up to present, "The Center of Something," an exhibit centered around the artist's "take on New York as a destination for both visiting and living." Since Chashama is in Times Square, the exhibit itself will become a temporary tourist attraction itself. But will the locals or the tourists be the ones flocking to it?

The exhibit is modeled after the dozens of stores in the neighborhood selling the same inane souvenirs, which play off of tourist's preconceived images of New York. In an attempt to create new icons for the city, Rubino's installation will consist of his 'souvenirs' as well as hand drawn screenprints that recreate pieces of New York's everyday scenery, i.e. maps, advertisements, and signage.

The relentless eradication of everything that gives New York character got you down? The Tourism Board of Colorado is here to sweep you off your feet with a hard sell for the Rocky Mountain state at their “Lets Talk Colorado” gallery near Grand Central [317 Madison Ave]. As this photo suggests, here you can marvel at videos of men wandering through desolate landscapes without an abusive cabbie or $81 hamburger in sight.

If you're a 67-year-old retired math professor from Montreal and your wife (in Canada) finds out about your near-death S&M-related experience in New York City from a NY Post reporter, what do you do? Well, if you're Richard Benjamin, you give the Post an exclusive interview, landing on the front page and earning the headline "They Beat it Out of Me."

With the writers' strike looking like it'll wrap up this week, Crain's points us towards another problem for New York's entertainment industry.

Last year Bloomberg announced the "first-ever global multimedia communications campaign to promote New York City," with efforts to bring in more tourism through television, outdoor advertising, internet and everything in between.

Hey, tourists, NYC may want you to spend lots of money when you visit the Big Apple, but just don't get really sick or else the Administration for Children's Services will take your kids in! Because that's what happened to one British family last month!

The upside to the weak U.S. dollar? NYC made $28 billion from tourists last year. The Mayor announced that tourism to NYC was at record highs, with 46 million people visiting the Big Apple. Of the 46 million tourists, 8.5 million were from other countries, which is another high. From Mayor Bloomberg's speech:

This incredible surge puts us well on our way to reaching our goal of drawing 50 million annual visitors by the year 2015. And it's helping to bolster our local businesses even as the economy is slowing down nationwide....The impact of those dollars reverberated in every sector of our economy: from our neighborhood shops and restaurants to our hotels - which sold a record 22.8 million rooms, to arts and cultural institutions. In fact, City-owned cultural institutions across the five boroughs saw a combined increase of 855,000 visitors since 2006.

It's been snowing out lately, and thanks to The World's Largest Snow Globe, it's going to be snowing indoors soon as well. Standing at over twenty feet tall, the monstrosity of holiday cheer will be arriving at The Pond at Bryant Park next week (December 14th to 18th). Throughout the week, the snow globe will feature live models in cheery winter scenes, not unlike an Old Navy ad. Why? Good question. In typical holiday fashion,...

Last month, New York City kicked off a big global advertising campaign to attract more tourists to the Big Apple. The ads appear in a number of venues, and the Post notes that media space has been bought in Out magazine and on the LOGO network, as well as LGBT websites. A Bloomberg administration official explains that gay and lesbians have more disposable income, as they are usually dual-income without kids, "What we're saying...

The Critical Mass Halloween Ride is tonight! If you go, get some good pictures!

Gothamist would expect Chicago area sports teams to wear special green uniforms just because it's a city that dumps green dye into their river (our rivers can be greenish, thanks to other factors). But when we were checking out the Knicks' website, we learned that the Knicks will wear green uniforms for the first time, thanks to special sponsor, Tourism Island. And while Gothamist thinks this is lame, we understand why the Knicks undertook the sponsorship, beacuse if they ever needed the luck of the Irish, it's tonight, as they will be playing the first place Detroit Pistons. There will be other Irish tie-ins, like the entertainment, food specials (corned beef?), and giveaways, but we're pretty sure that most fans will be drowning their sorrows in beer so they forget the loss.

Watch it when you love NY! NY State is trying to enforce its claim to the love by setting its lawyers on people who use the logo without the permission of the Empire State Development Development Corporation. The latest incident seems to be a NJ man's use of the logo on various tchotchkes (he's sold 15,000 of them); Ray Maniaci tells the Post NY State should be flattered people love the logo so much. Gothamist guesses his Garden State status is part of the problem, since an ESDC lawyers says, "The logo belongs to the people of the state of New York and they rely on us to project it." Protect it from being used on a thong, that is.

Two weeks after we wondered about the Bahamas Tourism Board's subway advertising, the NY Times takes up the task. It turns out that CBS Outdoor will remove two of the ads, because they are bad for subway behavior: The "How to turn a seat into a hammock" ad and the "Flyflish with a cellphone on subway tracks" ad (the "Subway snorkeling" and "Use your umbrella as a golf club" ads are safe). Well, duh. As amusing as they would be, Gothamist would get spooked when we'd see this poster of the ONCOMING train as the figure is cellphone-flyfishing. (Yes, we're a big ol' scaredy cat.) And the Post seems to have the first post-subway rules incident where the police ticketed a woman for putting her shopping bag (from Whole Foods, natch) down on the seat next to her on the F train - and the train was pretty empty! The CBS Outdoor spokesperson told the Times, "We don't act as censors but clearly if an ad advocates something that compromies the safety of the community, we will not post or in fact act to remove the said ad copy." The ad agency behind the ads is Fallon, which says they are "great." Gothamist would agree they are interesting, but since Fallon no longer has a NY office, we assume they just want idiot New Yorkers to kill themselves or get fined.

So, with Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz's dream of finding a perfect slogan for Brooklyn comes the reailty that there's no one slogan that's good enough for the borough. Instead, the borough will use a variety of civilian-suggested slogans for different campaigns. According to the Daily News, "the Brooklyn Tourism Partnership will use several slogans - which range from the classy ('Brooklyn: Bridge to the World') to the wacky ('Brooklyn: The Tenth Planet') and possibly risque ('Do It In Brooklyn') - for specific advertising campaigns." Hey, aren't there only eight planets?

Besides checking out some great Italian and Puerto Rican food in the Bronx, there's the New York Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo. And there's also the Bronx Tourism Council.