Tourists visit the new interactive experience called "The Beam" at Rockefeller Center on December . [+] 12, 2023, allowing visitors to recreate the famed 1932 photo "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," showing 11 workers eating lunch on a steel beam above Manhattan while 30 Rock was under construction.
AFP via Getty Images
We knew New York’s travel industry would recover from the pandemic—Gotham is the most visited city in the Western hemisphere.
McKinsey recently published an updated perspective about the Big Apple’s travel and tourism sector, showing a rebound from its pandemic lull. Our report states that about 62 million travelers arrived in 2023, 93 percent of 2019 levels, including more than 11 million from overseas. While international arrivals are only 86 percent of 2019 levels, these visitors spent almost three times more than domestic travelers, proving that the city retains its international appeal.
What we didn’t know was how travel plans and trip itineraries would change. Times Square and the Empire State Building are still top draws, but more visitors are now venturing beyond Manhattan, staying longer, spending more time outdoors, and looking for more novel, immersive experiences.
These have important implications for the travel and tourism industry—and New York’s economy. Tourism generated $74 billion in economic impact in the city in 2023, and it’s on track to set new records with 68 million visitors in 2025.
While Manhattan is still uniquely appealing, many visitors are also looking farther afield and taking their time to enjoy more of what the metropolitan area has to offer. United States mobile data from Placer.ai suggests that four of the city’s five counties, along with Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island, hosted more visitors in 2023 than in 2019—Manhattan was down. The number of domestic visitors who stayed in the city between 8 and 31 days increased to a million in 2023, up from 700,000 in 2019.[1]
More travelers are enjoying Prospect Park and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn, for example, and Major League baseball in the Bronx and Queens. The department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation reports that visits to state parks in the city have roughly doubled since 2019. The High Line is projected to reach visitation levels of 7 million this year. Demand is also rising for day trips outside the city to places such as Dia Beacon, a contemporary art museum in the Hudson Valley, wineries in Long Island’s North Fork, and more.
In our 2024 survey of 5,000 travelers around the world, 20 percent ranked “authentic experiences and immersion in the local culture” among the three main reasons they travel; 63 percent ranked the quality and range of activities “important” or “extremely important.”
New York is responding, offering more innovative, “Instagrammable,” tech-enabled experiences to help visitors connect with the city. RiseNY in Times Square, for example, sends visitors “soaring” over the city to learn about its history and sites. Classic sites are also reinventing themselves to create a reason to revisit. The Top of the Rock, for example, opened “The Beam,” in late 2023, offering visitors a thrilling way to recreate the famous 1932 photo of construction workers eating lunch 69 stories above the sidewalk.
New York City has enduring appeal, but we also know the world is changing faster than ever. Maya Angelou famously said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” The same holds true for New York City. Travelers won’t remember every detail of a trip here, but they will remember how the city made them feel. Leaders in New York’s travel and tourism industry can work together to help visitors enjoy a new world of attractions and experiences alongside the city’s enduring bustle, unique diversity, history, and glamor.