New York City is a hellhole of unchecked crime, rampant homelessness, empty office buildings and raging maniacs on every corner and subway platform.
How, then, can it be that the Big Apple drew 64.3 million visitors (tourists and business travelers) in 2024, a mere hair below the 2019 record of 66.2 million and 3.5% more than in 2023, according to the New York City Tourism + Conventions organization?
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How can total visitors in 2025 be projected to top that 2019 record, with at least 67 million visitors expected this year?
Do the tourists harbor a death wish? Or are they just ordinary masochists who get their jollies from being held up at gunpoint and cursed at by psychos?
Seth Gottfried
Are business travelers wasting their time coming here, when a supposed glut of abandoned office buildings is an article of faith among “experts” who maintain they’ll never recover from the COVID-10 exodus?
Of course, in fact, Manhattan’s office towers are anything but empty — the best ones, at least, are so full, tenants complain they can find no available space.
And while some local pols and pundits have given up on the Big Apple, the rest of the world clearly hasn’t. They have a clearer perception than do our home-grown “experts” hung up on every grim statistic or false perception.
News reports of fatal subway pushes aren’t the only source of information for people who don’t live or work here. They also view our town through the social media prism, which is dominated by Facebook and Instagram photos of happy families and friends enjoying the sights.
There are, also, “Saturday Night Live” opening sequences which colorfully portray Midtown Manhattan and Rockefeller Center as the center of arts, entertainment and culture; the televised Times Square New Year’s Eve ball drops, which are far more fun than than fireworks in London and Dubai; and inimitable Big Apple public spectacles from the Coney Island Mermaid Parade to the New York City Marathon.
Probably most important to those considering a trip here are observations by people who came for pleasure or business and had a grand old time, irrespective of horror stories about crime-committing migrants at the Roosevelt Hotel.
Turning it into a central Midtown migrants center was a sad commentary on Mayor Adams’ judgement and a blight on his entire record. But to visitors, the more meaningful news is the reopening of the Four Seasons Hotel on East 57th Street — among many recent hospitality-industry developments that proclaimed a triumphant end to COVID-era defeatism like no other place in America.
Ah, but what about the subways, where a record 12 murders occurred in 2024? Shouldn’t travelers be scared out of their wits? My fellow No. 6 train riders who recently asked in fractured English for “directions to the Statue of Liberty” certainly weren’t afraid.
Perspective is needed there, too. If someone told you your chances of being assaulted in the system were a less-than-minute one in two million based on the number of incidents and rides taken, as current NYPD and MTA data show, you wouldn’t likely feel a need to switch to Ubers to go a few blocks.
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When The New York Times reports, as it did this week, that felony assaults in 2019 were even fewer than in 2024 — one for every 4.5 million rides — it can sound like the subways have grown incomparably more risky. But percentages can be meaningless even when they’re accurate.
This probably explains why, despite the much-reported increases in mayhem, subway ridership not only hasn’t fallen — it’s continued rising. Total ridership in 2024 was 1.195 billion, according to the MTA, a healthy uptick from 1.15 billion in 2023. That’s still well below 1.699 billion in 2019, when no one had yet heard of “work from home,” but the upward trend is clear.
Our alleged woes (well, they’re real woes but not as bad as commonly portrayed) pale in comparison to those in other large cities. Visitation levels reflect the differences. Take, for example, shooting-gallery Chicago, the US city most similar to New York.
AP
Windy City visits have also risen since 2020 but not nearly as much as in Gotham. In 2023, they were 15.6% below the 2019 level, compared with 6.6% in the Big Apple (Chicago’s total for 2024 wasn’t available at press time). Even Chicago’s apparent, modest recovery is skewed by its much larger convention facilities than ours — 3.2 million square feet, twice as much as in New York.
So we ain’t dead yet — a truth that’s plain to outsiders even if our home-grown “experts” have yet to catch on.