New York's great tourism leap

Reporting from New York—

OK, quickly name America's top tourist destination.

Orlando, Fla.? Las Vegas? The Grand Canyon?

Try New York.

By New Year's Eve, New York expected to have made history by snaring more than 50 million tourists in one year, considerably surpassing a deadline that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg set early in his administration for 2015 and then moved up to the end of 2012.

When it became clear that the city would come in a year ahead of schedule, Bloomberg staged a media event just before Christmas in Times Square with balloons and billboards and a couple of smiling Brits.

But if Bloomberg wanted unstaged testimony for this New York success story, he could have turned to Brian and Mellie Jenkins and their two teenage daughters, who were bundled up against the cold one day as they ate trendy sandwiches on a park bench in the East Village.

"The girls think we're so cool for taking them to Tompkins Square Park," said Brian, 56, a lawyer and closet foodie from Illinois who brings his family to New York annually for the week between Christmas and New Year's, the city's busiest tourist season.

Jaded East Villagers, wearing black scarves and smirks, couldn't help but stare at the tall, blond family in heavy parkas tucking into what might be considered only-in-New York sandwiches. Brian and Mellie had chicken liver, bacon and onions packed between two pieces of challah, which they were clearly embarrassed to admit appeared on the take-out menu as "The Conflicted Jew," while their daughters tried to get their hands around the "The Almighty Brisket" — with cheddar cheese, horseradish and mayo on a Brioche bun.

Daphne, 17, and Lily, 15, were hungry and a tad grumpy after waiting three hours in line for Dad's favorite view on top of the Empire State Building. But they were also eager for the next stop — Brooklyn's hip Williamsburg neighborhood, where they hoped to shop for vintage clothes.

Brian said he didn't get the "vintage clothes thing," but he was game to go anywhere in New York.

"Really, the whole city feels more and more tourist-friendly every year," he said.

Bloomberg couldn't have said it better himself. Not that he hasn't tried — relentlessly, in fact, since getting elected in 2002.

At $47 billion a year, tourism has grown to be New York's fifth-largest industry and the fastest-growing sector of its economy, which the mayor has said softened the effects of the Great Recession on the city. Tourism dropped 3% in 2009, but picked right up again and now is responsible for 320,000 jobs.

It helped that dozens of new hotels sprouted in all five boroughs, many in Manhattan's old Garment District, so that the city now has 90,000 rooms with another 7,000 in the pipeline. The average hotel stay costs $314 a night.

Statistics from 2010, the last full year for which numbers are available, stand out. Not only was New York America's most popular destination, outpacing Orlando in domestic travelers, but the city also accounted for 33% of all overseas travel to the United States.

Together, Los Angeles and Miami — the second and third most popular destinations — got fewer foreign visitors in 2010 than New York did.

Although international travelers accounted for only a fourth of the tourists who came to New York that year, on average they spent $1,700 and stayed 7.3 days. Domestic travelers spent an average $432 and stayed 2.7 days.

Chris McGinnis, a travel correspondent and consultant based in San Francisco, said many factors went into New York's heightened popularity.

"There's the weak dollar and the influx of lower-priced hotels, which make New York more accessible to American tourists," he said. "So they can stay in a Best Western or Holiday Inn and have the whole Manhattan experience. In the past you'd have to stay far out in the boroughs to get a hotel within the ballpark of someone who is not on business."

View the original article here

Partnership wants to boost tourism between Seoul, NYC

CRISTIAN SALAZAR Associated Press

9:17 a.m. CDT, October 4, 2011

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City's got Seoul.

Seeing potential in attracting more travelers from Asia, the city's tourism agency announced a partnership Monday with the government of the South Korean capital to spark more cultural and recreational visits between the two metropolises.

The partnership also was announced at a news conference at Seoul City Hall.

As part of the agreement, an advertising campaign will appear in the entertainment and shopping districts of both cities. More than 130 posters in Seoul will promote travel to New York City; 70 posters in the city will encourage New Yorkers to visit Seoul. Digital ads for Seoul also will appear in Times Square.

In addition, Korean Air is offering a discount on flights between Seoul and New York City for a limited time. The airfare, starting at $1,295 for Seoul-bound flights, must be purchased by Oct. 31 for travel between Nov. 1, 2011, and March 31, 2012. The period includes major winter holidays, as well as the Lunar New Year.

George Fertitta, chief executive of NYC & Company, said the two cities have much in common.

"Both are global leaders of business, innovation, design and style," he said in prepared remarks. "Both are pop culture capitals."

The partnership is NYC & Company's first with an Asian country. It previously formed partnerships with London, Madrid, Sao Paulo and Miami.

NYC & Company said travel from South Korea to the United States rose 49 percent last year. About 223,000 South Koreans visited New York City in 2010. Among them, about 60 percent visited for leisure and 40 percent to see friends or relatives.

More than 650,000 traveled from the U.S. to visit Seoul, a city of almost 10 million.

View the original article here

Mexico aims to make end of Maya calendar a starter for tourism

The ancient Maya calendar ends Dec. 21, 2012, and Hollywood has wasted no time portraying the coming date as the trigger of a worldwide cataclysm.

But in Mexico, where drug violence has hobbled the nation's $70-billion tourism industry, government leaders hope to counter Tinseltown's doomsday scenario by promoting 2012 as the year of the tourist.

Several of Mexico's top tourism officials have been making the rounds in their northern neighbor, betting that an invitation to see Maya ruins will attract hordes of older, wealthier U.S. visitors keen on Mexican culture.

Whereas the Hollywood blockbuster "2012" depicts the end of the Maya calendar as the spark of a global calamity, the Mexican campaign will include a countdown to the calendar's conclusion and urge tourists to visit archaeological sites in the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo and Tabasco.

"Our interpretation of the Mayan calendar is reverse to what many people speculate," Rodolfo Lopez-Negrete, the chief operating officer for the Mexico Tourism Board, said on a swing through Los Angeles with other top Mexican officials this summer. "Our focus will be on growth and prosperity instead of the end of the world."

The campaign is the latest effort by Mexico to overcome a steady stream of negative publicity over drug-related violence that has killed tens of thousands in that country and made many American tourists hesitant to venture south of the border.

U.S. travelers made up about 60% of Mexico's 22.4 million international visitors in 2010, according to Mexican authorities.

When drug killings first began to dominate headlines in 2008, tourism to Mexico dropped steeply. But it has been rebounding slowly ever since, mostly because of international visitors from countries other than the United States.

From January to May, the number of international visitors to Mexico grew 2.1% compared with the same period in 2010, according to the tourism board.

During that time, the numbers of tourists from such countries as Brazil, Russia and China have grown by double digits, the board says. Meanwhile, U.S. tourism to Mexico remained mostly flat, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Tourism analysts partly blame the lackluster travel interest among Americans on warnings by the U.S. State Department. One warning in April said "U.S. citizens have been injured or killed in violent incidents in various parts of the country, especially … in the northern border region, demonstrating the heightened risk of violence throughout Mexico."

In an effort to deflect attention away from the violence, Mexico's tourism secretary, Gloria Guevara, and the governors of several Mexican states joined the recent swing through the U.S. to promote their country's historical destinations, particularly 10 Maya archaeological sites in five Mexican states.

"Our task is to be proactive," Guevara said during the Los Angeles stop.

But Mexico is still a tough sell among many wary tourists north of the border.

At Montrose Travel in Montrose, agent sales manager Kate Bernier said U.S. travelers are still reluctant to book flights to Mexican hot spots such as Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. "People will still ask, "Is it safe to go?" she said, adding that Americans seem less concerned about traveling to Mexican states near the Caribbean that are home to many of the Maya ruins.

The classic Maya civilization existed from AD 250 to AD 900, primarily in what is now southern Mexico. It relied on a calendar that began more than 5,000 years ago and runs out Dec. 21, 2012. But most scientists who have studied the Maya calendar say the end only represents the start of a new cycle.

The predictions surrounding the end of the Maya calendar have also been the subject of dozens of books published during the last two years, including the popular "The Source Field Investigations: The Hidden Science and Lost Civilizations Behind the 2012 Prophecies."

Mexican officials say they will promote their new tourism campaign on billboards and in newspaper and magazine ads, targeting affluent travelers interested in Mexican archaeology as opposed to the younger set looking to party and frolic in the sand.

Fernando Ortega Bernes, governor of the southeastern state of Campeche, said he expects the campaign to promote not only Maya ruins in his state, including the ancient city of Calakmul, but also other popular attractions such as hunting, fishing and bird watching.

"This is an opportunity," he said, "to [position] Campeche in the international marketplace."

hugo.martin@latimes.com

View the original article here

Mexican president goes adventure touring to boost battered tourism

MEXICO CITY (AP) — President Felipe Calderon is figuratively going out on a limb — and literally down a sinkhole, up a river (with a paddle) and over the top of a few pyramids — in an attempt to boost Mexico's flagging tourism industry.

The balding, 49-year-old leader is personally trying to change his country's violent reputation by appearing as a sort of adventure tour guide in a series of TV programs to be broadcast starting in September on Public Broadcasting Service stations in the United States.

The president dons an Indiana Jones-style hat and a harness and descends a rope into the 1,000-foot-deep (375-meter) Sotano de las Golondrinas cavern, accompanied by Peter Greenberg, host of the "The Royal Tour" TV series. Calderon also straps on scuba tanks to lead Greenberg into a sinkhole lake known as a cenote in Yucatan. And he helps a Lacandon Indian paddle a boat down a river in a jungle in southern Chiapas state.

In the 30-minute videos, Calderon breaks from his image as a lawyerly policy wonk best known for launching a bloody, controversial offensive against drug cartels. He plans to attend a premiere of the show within a few weeks, according to Tourism Department spokesman Roberto Martinez.

"I have other duties that are more dangerous," Calderon jokes, dangling midair in a cavern as a rope lowers him hundreds of feet to the bottom. The site is in the Gulf coast region of Mexico known as the Huasteca, which is covered in jungle and dotted with caverns, waterfalls and crystalline pools.

Calderon swaps the explorer hat for a helmet with a headlamp for the descent into the Golondrinas cave, named for the huge flocks of birds that live inside. Calderon also appears in underwater footage from the stalactite-studded cenote in Yucatan, where he flashes the camera an "OK" signal from behind his dive mask.

Analysts say the videos represent a distinct break from the solemn treatment that has long characterized the Mexican presidency but fit in with Calderon, who has emphasized using the media to get his message across, and who has sought to project a forceful image.

"That's always been his objective, the whole macho thing," said John Ackerman, of the legal research institute at Mexico's National Autonomous University. In 2007, soon after putting the army on the front line of his offensive against drug cartels, Calderon departed from presidential tradition by putting on an olive-green army jacket that was a few sizes too big for his short frame, an image that has been widely lampooned in newspaper cartoons ever since.

"From the very beginning, using the military uniforms and saluting, it's always been his kind of thing," Ackerman said. "It doesn't quite fit with his physical appearance."

Drawing criticism, Calderon's administration took the image-building a step further this year by funding a privately produced television miniseries glorifying the federal police, which was broadcast by the country's largest network. On Friday, the navy told local news media that it is letting private producers use navy locations to make a miniseries about the force, but that the navy is not financing any of the production.

Calderon's message in the latest videos is that Mexico is safe for tourists.

"This is part of a strategy to promote the country abroad," said Martinez.

Nobody argues that Mexico's tourism needs a boost. According to the country's central bank, overall foreign tourism in 2010, not including border-area visitors, was still 6.3 percent below 2008 levels, and the first half of 2011 saw a 2 percent decline from the same period of 2010.

Cruise ship visits in the first half of the year declined 9.3 percent, after several cruise lines canceled Pacific port calls in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta.

Analysts blame the drops on the world economic downturn hitting many countries' travel industries, but also pointed to Mexico's drug violence, which has claimed between 35,000 and 40,000 lives since Calderon took office in late 2006.

While foreign tourists have not been targets of the violence, a point Calderon is eager to make, it has had some undeniable effects. For example, the border highway that many U.S. visitors once used to travel to the Huasteca region where Calderon went cave-diving is now considered so plagued by highway holdups and shootings that the U.S. State Department has issued warnings about traveling there.

The Huasteca remains a beautiful and largely safe region, but most tour operators recommend foreigners fly to a nearby Mexican airport rather than drive down from the border.

Some argue that Calderon's stint as a television travel guide might be ill-advised, both because it compromises the dignity of the presidency and comes just months before campaigning opens for the 2012 elections to choose his successor.

Mario di Costanzo, a congressman for the leftist Labor Party, says he has requested information on how much Mexico spent to film the series. Calderon's office said the videos' U.S. producers paid production costs on the trips, but Mexican presidential and military helicopters can be seen ferrying the 'presidential tourists' around.

"We are questioning the legality of the president's actions," Di Costanzo said. "Never in the history of the country has the image of the president been used to promote tourism."

"We see this as a promotion of Felipe Calderon's own image, for the benefit of his own party, rather than an institutional image of the country as a tourism destination," Di Costanzo noted.

Greenberg has previously traveled with the king of Jordan, the president of Peru, and the prime ministers of New Zealand and Jamaica on similar programs.

Congresswoman Leticia Quezada of the Democratic Revolution Party said her party objects to Calderon using government vehicles and personnel for the series, and said he has been spending too much time and money on television.

"We're going to start calling him Felipe Calderon Productions," she quipped.

View the original article here