New York Beats London In Tourism Even Without Olympic Games
New York may have lost the summer Olympics bid to London
for the just-ended event, but that didn’t translate to a dip in tourism for the
Big Apple.
The conventional wisdom is that the Olympics bring tons
of tourists to the host city, but New York showed the world once again it can’t
be beat.
“New York is so powerful that it doesn’t need the
Olympics to succeed,” NYU Urban Policy professor Mitchell Moss told WCBS 880′s
Alex Silverman. “We continue to actually out-draw London without the games,” by
more than 100,000 tourists a day, Moss said.
As Olympics host, London had to build new arenas to
accommodate all the events, at a high cost.
“And what we did is we got the best of this. We got all
the Olympic facilities, many of them, but we didn’t have the city disrupted. We
had the city flourish as a tourist mecca while London actually lost tourists
during the Games,” Moss told Silverman.
A survey of 250 tourism-related businesses in all of
Britain showed an overwhelming drop in visitors and profits compared with the
same time last year. Nearly 9 in 10 businesses reported losses, and visitor
numbers were down 10% to 30%, according to the survey conducted by trade group
UKinbound.
“In part because so many people in London decided to come
to America, come to New York, rather than be there because there were warnings
about gridlock and traffic jams,” Moss said.
London theater saw a 30% drop and hotel occupancy was
down 12% versus the same period last year.
“Additional tourist attractions like the Tower of London
and the British Museum, they had a 20-30% decline during the Games,” Moss said.
Professor Moss said he doesn’t think that would have
happened had New York been awarded the Games.
“I think New York is actually much better equipped to
handle big events,” he told Silverman.
Moss said it’s important to keep the momentum going to
help strengthen the city’s economy.
“Tourism is one of our great anchor industries now,” Moss
told Silverman.
The official number of visitors who were in Britain
during the Olympics will not be released until next month.
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