Love 'Em Or Hate 'Em, Tourists Are Keeping NYC Vibrant

NEW YORK, NY — It's not your imagination — your favorite restaurant is more packed with tourists these days. But a new report says that's a good thing as New York City's tourism boom is creating thousands of jobs in eateries and other industries.

Tourists spent $9.1 billion at food and drinking establishments in 2016, up 35 percent from 2009 according to "Destination New York," the Center for an Urban Future's report published Monday. The report's analysis of Visa credit card data shows out-of-towners were responsible for 24 percent of all sales at the city's restaurants in drinking places in 2016.

The tourist takeover has helped the city's restuarant and bar industry explode in recent years, the report says. It added 142,000 jobs from 2000 to 2016, nearly doubling the 156,000 it had in 2000. And restaurateurs told researchers the visitors help their eateries stay in business.

"In the depth of winter or the height of summer, New Yorkers don’t want to go out," Noah Bermanoff, the owner of Black Seed Bagels, Mile End and other Manhattan restaurants, said in the report. "August, for example, is a rough time for regular customers, but it’s packed with tourists."

A record high 62.8 million tourists visited the city in 2017, close to double the 33.1 million that came in 1998, according to the report, which was funded by the Association for a Better New York and Times Square Alliance.

Restaurants aren't the only industry that's benefitted from that boom. The number of direct tourism jobs in the city increased 27 percent from 2009 to 2016 — a faster rate than overall job growth — as the number of visitors climbed, the report shows.

Museums have also felt a big impact. Employment at museums in just Manhattan and Brooklyn spiked 81 percent to 8,870 from 2002 in 2016, the report says.

Meanwhile, the 33 members of the city's Cultural Institutions Group, which includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, counted 23.2 million visitors in 2016, up 33 percent from 2006. Tourists accounted for more than half that increase, the report says.

But the report cites several threats to the tourism industry, including the city's ailing subways, unpleasant airports and crowded streets. And the $38.6 million budget last year for the NYC & Company, the city's tourism promotions organization, is much smaller than other big cities. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, for example, has a budget of $487.7 million for this year, the report says.

(Lead image: Katz's Delicatessen is pictured in March 2015. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)