New York City is still waiting for its high-spending tourists to come back

• NYC tourism is on the rebound, expecting a 70% increase in tourists this year.
• New hotels, a busy Broadway, and a casino-to-come in Times Square are bringing tourism back to life.

New York City wants its tourists back.

The city has come a long way since its days in spring 2020 as the epicenter of the coronavirus, when local businesses shuttered their doors and the lights in Time Square dimmed. Two years later, real estate is booming, the city's most iconic cocktail bars have lines of people waiting to get in, and young professionals are flocking back to the city.

Tourists are also frequenting Central Park and the Empire State building again, but the city still has a long way to go before it reaches pre-pandemic tourism levels.

The city is expected to see a 70% increase in tourists this year compared to 2021 to 56.4 million visitors, per a recent forecast by the city tourism agency NYC & Company. That's still lower than the 66.6 million visitors the tourism agency estimated in 2019, but more than double the 22.3 million tourists who visited the city in 2020.

NYC & Company projects 8 million international tourists this year, well above the 2.4 million during the height of the pandemic in 2020 but still far below the 13.5 million visitors from abroad in 2019.

That might be partly because the city will be missing a key part of its tourism sector, as The New York Times reported: China's elite, who drove foreign visits to NYC in 2019, stayed longer and spent more than tourists from most other countries. They're still under the country's international travel ban.

Even domestic tourism is still suffering. Hotel business travel is down nationwide, but the industry in New York is the second-hardest hit after San Francisco, according to a new report by the American Hotel & Lodging Association Kalibri Labs. NYC's hotel business travel revenue is expected to be down by 55% this year compared to 2019.

The tourist downturn may delight New Yorkers on the streets who often bemoaned the masses of visitors wandering through the city before the pandemic, but it hasn't been good for the Big Apple's economy. Tourism generated $72 billion in economic impact annually pre-pandemic and provided more than 400,000 local jobs.

To get the wheels turning again, the city launched a $30 million tourism campaign last year. More recently, Mayor Eric Adams gave NYC & Company an additional $10 million in funding as a key part of his economic recovery blueprint to rebuild tourism, with the goal of surpassing pre-pandemic tourism levels by 2024.

There are already signs of a revival. New hotels are popping up across the city. It's going to be the busiest April for Broadway openings in 10-plus years. And, as The Wall Street Journal reported, Times Square — the tourist-favorite destination that New Yorkers love to hate — is rebounding faster than other Midtown areas after being the hardest-hit neighborhood during the pandemic. It's taking on a Las Vegas-like vibe, per WSJ, with several new developments in the works: a hotel with an outdoor pool, a second hotel with a concert stage, and the city's first casino.

But NYC is in need of a full tourism boom, which could prove challenging now that there are two new coronavirus variants running around the city. While the Big Apple is well into its economic recovery, tourism remains a pain point waiting to bounce back.