NEW YORK-
Go fight your way through the holiday hordes in Times Square this week between Christmas and New Year’s and you will likely witness a record in the making.
Officials predicted Wednesday that 44 million people will have visited the city by the end of 2006, including some 1.25 million people this week alone.
The number surpasses last year’s record total of 42.6 million and continues a crescendo of recovery since the tourism industry took a hit after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Tourism is said to support nearly 350,000 jobs and generate $24 billion annually for New York, which is why Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pushing to attract millions more tourists. He hopes for New York to draw 50 million annual visitors by 2015.
To help get there, the city is beginning an overseas marketing campaign offering various hotel and airline discounts for foreign travelers during traditionally slower periods.
“The days of New York City sitting there and saying, ‘We’re New York, they’re going to come to us,’ are long gone,” Bloomberg said. “People have alternatives to go anyplace in the world … we are in competition for tourists.”
Las Vegas, another top U.S. tourist draw, also expects to break records and surpass 38.7 million visitors this year, according to its convention and visitors authority.
The first phase of the New York tourism campaign was rolled out this month with advertising in London’s underground rail system. Officials said it was too soon to gauge the exact results of that push but the city was enjoying a spike in visitors from a number of foreign countries.
The number of international tourists, which has lagged behind domestic totals since the 2001 terror attacks, also is estimated to set a record this year with 7 million visitors from other countries. Its previous high was in 2000, with 6.78 million people.
International tourists are drawn to the United States because the weak dollar makes for shopping and entertainment bargains. In particular, there has been a surge in visitors from Ireland, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.
But more should be done to woo them and other foreign travelers, according to the U.S. Travel and Tourism Advisory Board.
In a September report to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the board said that this country’s competitive position in international tourism “is not nearly as strong as it should be.” There were slightly more than 49 million international visitors here in 2005, which represents about a 6 percent share of the 808 million travelers worldwide, it said.
Other countries have become better funded and more coordinated at courting visitors, while the U.S. lags behind, the board said. It also noted a widespread perception that the U.S. is a tangle of post-Sept. 11 extra security procedures and visa requirements.
“Our national strategy must include an entry process that is faster, friendlier and more efficient,” the report said.
Bloomberg echoed that concern on Wednesday.
“You want somebody that says, ‘Welcome to our country, we want you here,'” he said. “It doesn’t mean you can’t check their credentials, it doesn’t mean you can’t check things in their background, but doing it in a ways that make people feel protected and not feel that they are disliked is the great challenge and very important to us.”
