Hard times are hitting the Big Apple tourism and hotel industry for 2009, reflecting in one more way the impact of the current worldwide Recession we are living through.
This is where I come off as the “small town rube” I really am, I suppose. I was looking at a story just now about the New York City hotel industry and NYC tourism in general. The article made the point that tourism in 2009 was expected to fall from 47 million visitors in 2008 to 44.5 million visitors in 2009.
Heck, that seems like a pretty enormous number to me, coming from a small village in southeast Nebraska and living for the last 30+ years in a metro area of about 200,000-250,000 in southwest Missouri. See? Told you I was a rube.
One industry official says that NYC hotel revenues-to-available-rooms ratios will be the lowest since September 11, 2001. The same executive, however, says the NYC hotel industry will finish the year financially stronger than in any other major U.S. city. So I guess even the hard times aren’t going to be quite as hard in New York as they might be in the rest of the country.
How about your personal hard times? Are you cutting back on travel plans this year? Or will you be able to take any sort of vacation at all? Leave a comment and let us know how you’re faring.