By Matt Chaban 4/25/12 4:52pm

tourist hordes

Tourist attractions.

The Secret to the City’s Tourism Boom? Developing Countries (and Their Deep Pockets)

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that that the city would be raking in $70 billion from tourists four years from now, as the administration and NYC & Company continue to ramp up tourism to the city. Spending last year amounted to $32.5 billion, and $48.5 billion in economic impact, from a record 50.5 million tourists.

This got The Observer thinking, and, as often happens when we get to thinking, we we got to worrying.

At current rates, wouldn’t it take, given diminishing returns, another 25 million tourists or so to reach the target spending levels by 2015? Think Times Square and the Brooklyn Bridge are bad now? Imagine them 50 percent more crowded. Oh, the humanity. (There would certainly be a lot of humanity around.)

But it turns out we had it backwards. This is not a case of diminishing returns but compounding ones. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/20/11 10:51am

on the waterfront

Keep 'em coming. (Getty)

Governor’s Island Gets Rained Out, So What’s on the Horizon?

Since it opened in 2006, around this time each year, a press release would shoot out from Governor’s Island, a torpedo blasting across the harbor, trumpeting the latest attendance numbers. The ice-cream-cone-shaped island, for most of its life an off-limits military compound, had reason to crow. It’s visitor’s numbers were soaring, putting to rest questions of its viability as a new public park—purchased for all of $1 from the U.S. government in 2005. From 26,000 visitors that first year, attendance jumped to 443,000 last year, 60 percent what it had been the year before.

This year, there has been no press release, no champagne. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/07/11 2:48pm

Tales of Retail

Big time.

Century 21, Tourist Horde's Favorite Department Store, Expanding Just in Time for Ground Zero Crowds

It may be the worst shopping experience after the Trader Joe’s in Union Square. Still, when Century 21 is good, it’s really good. Dress shoes, bow ties, and some of the best clearance deals in town—if you can stand slapdash shelves and crammed clothes racks, the flood of tourists fighting for clothes and the woefully indifferent staff, the store can be a goldmine.

These problems could be disappearing as Century 21 plans to expand its downtown flagship in the coming months, according to Crain’s. Well, everything except for the rudeniks behind those red aprons. Read More