What brought a record number of visitors back to New York

Ross Levi plays a key role in steering the state’s tourism promotion at Empire State Development. As executive director of the state Division of Tourism, Levi helps distribute millions of dollars toward projects and marketing efforts to boost the number of visits to the state. That work helped the industry rebound since 2020, bringing a record number of visitors to New York in 2022. City & State talked about New York state’s success in attracting tourists, and what state officials are doing to bring back international and business visitors. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

What has New York state’s tourism rebound looked like since the pandemic?

New York state as a whole is not only fully recovered in terms of tourism, jobs, and visitation and spending, it’s actually at a historic all-time high. The most recent numbers that we have from 2022 represent really staggering increases over 2021 and surpass the previous record set in 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. That partly comes following the continued high level of investment by Gov. (Kathy) Hochul and the Legislature in tourism, economic development, public safety, transportation and other key sectors.

What does that rebound look like in different parts of the state? Are certain areas doing better or faring worse?

First of all, there are overall segments of tourism travel that are still recovering and not necessarily back to their full level. International travel, particularly from Asia, and business travel being the two biggest examples of that. Largely as a result of that, you have certain parts of the state that are doing stronger than others. For example, New York City, in particular, is affected by international and business travel. While New York City is usually ahead of the rest of the state, in terms of tourism numbers, right now it’s a bit of the opposite. 

Looking at some of the tourism spending data from Empire State Development, some upstate regions have really been outshining their 2019 tourism spending. What other factors are driving some of that growth and in different parts of the state?

Anecdotally, we heard during the pandemic, the number of people who visited parts of New York state who hadn’t done so before, or at least had done so in many years, grew a great deal. During the pandemic, people were concerned about air travel. They felt more comfortable being closer to home, going in their car, being in outdoor spaces. They went out and experienced New York state, had an amazing time, and then wanted to go again. That has helped us a great deal in terms of seeing, for example, domestic travel go to higher levels than it’s ever been before, even making up for any soft spots in, again, international travel that might be a little slower and coming back, or business travel which may have changed post-pandemic.

Are there ways we can get international travelers and business travelers back, especially given how much work has changed after the pandemic?

I Love New York has concentrated on international travel for years and has only ramped that up since the pandemic. We’ve also gotten more into business travel. We have been more active in that space than we’ve ever been. For international, we’ve for a number of years now been concentrating on four strategic markets on a state level. That’s the U.K., Germany, Australia and Canada. Those markets were chosen based on the number of visitors they send to New York, on the capacity of those visitors to come to New York – for example, the number of air trips available from overseas destinations – and how much New York has to do that travelers from those regions want to do. On the business –  what we refer to as the travel trade side – we’ve been going to a number of trade shows where meeting planners make decisions and event producers and group travel organizers sell New York state as a destination for their business.

What type of investments is Empire State Development making to support tourism?

We use many of the traditional marketing platforms one would expect of a destination marketing organization from paid advertising to digital and social media to experiential marketing, where we go out to special events and talk to people about traveling New York state, public relations and media efforts. We also work hard to support New York’s tourism industry and make sure that our partners who are out there doing this work are able to do so in an effective way. For example, there are funding programs that New York state has that fund tourism marketing and tourism capital programs by businesses and organizations across the state.