No, it’s not your imagination. There really are more tourists around than usual this month. In fact this November is expected to be the best November for tourism in New York’s history. We’re talking more than 3.6 million visitors expected to shell out their hard earned cash in our fair city in this month alone (anybody else remember when the 3.25 million visitors we got in November 2000 seemed like more people than we could handle?).
Most of the tourists are coming from the US to do touristy things like see shows and shop (which reminds us of the amazing statistic that “one out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11”), but the exceptionally large turnout for the Marathon earlier in the month didn’t exactly hurt the numbers and expectations are high for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade turnout at the end of the month (not to mention the balloon blowing parties the night before!).
Considering how many people we know who work in the tourism industry we just can’t bring ourselves to complain about more tourists (though Bill, just so we’re clear, drinks are so on you tomorrow). We just hope they don’t all ride on those damn partybikes while we're trying to get through Times Square to our office…
Speaking of record breaking numbers: Last month the MTA had the highest average daily ridership numbers it has seen since 1971 with over 7.5 million riders a day on weekdays. That’s a lot of people!
Photograph of Barney balloon being blown up by Bluejake.
