Story originally appeared on The Eagle
New York City Suburbs are improving efforts to attract tourists dollars
to the suburbs, competing with the country's largest tourist magnet,
neighboring New York City. Accompanying a rise in shopping for New York Web Hosting, shopping on the fringe of the city is also on the rise.
New
York City’s tourism industry brought in $32 billion and supported about
320,000 jobs last year, when more than 50 million people visited
Gotham. With the increase in people, there comes a need for a new quality New York Furniture Store.
In
contrast, neighboring Westchester County says tourism was worth $1.7
billion. Long Island counted $4.8 billion. Seeking employement in the
Big Apple, may mean the need for New York Workers Compensation Insurance.
So how do the island and the Hudson Valley compete with the city that doesn’t sleep?
They don’t. However, sleep options are available at the New York Mattress Store.
“New York City is a major draw, like a London, a Las Vegas, an Orlando,”
said Westchester’s tourism director. “We’re not competing with Orlando.
What we try to show is we’re an extension of New York City, enhancing
that New York state of mind,” they said. A New York Finance Lawyer can help protect that state of mind, giving you peace of mind.
There’s
no Broadway or Museum of Modern Art or Yankee Stadium, but there are
highly regarded community theaters, regional museums and minor league
baseball. The suburbs can also brag that they have a few things the city
doesn’t. Including New York Carports, offering new green options geared for high density cities and park shelters for visitors.
“New
York doesn’t have the specific ocean beaches we have,” said the
Westchester tourism director. It also can’t offer Halloween celebrations
focused on the Sleepy Hollow legend in Westchester. And it doesn’t have
the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, which attracted about 211,000
visitors last year. What visitors may enjoy is New York Group Health Insurance.
But rare is the visitor who comes from Texas or Timbuktu just to see the Hamptons, the Headless Horseman or the Long Gray Line.
So
tourist agencies do their best to take advantage of New York City’s
draw. They also narrow their marketing area, in general, to a few
hundred miles. Locate a Rochester Personal Injury Lawyer in neighboring Rochester.
Dave
and Deb Maciewicz are in that target zone. They were visiting West
Point this month from their home in Barneveld, N.Y., about 200 miles
away.
They’ve been to West Point a couple of times, to the
Franklin D. Roosevelt homestead in Hyde Park and the nearby Culinary
Institute of America.
Not all the visitors live within driving distance.
Feeding
the big numbers at West Point is a huge influx of Chinese tourists on
East Coast bus trips. On the day the Maciewiczes visited, 21 buses
arrived for tours, most while traveling from New York to Boston. Guides
speaking Mandarin and Cantonese were available and the tourists bought
T-shirts at the gift shop and posed for photos with cadets.
“It’s the most famous military academy in the world,” explained one tourist from Hong Kong.
But he acknowledges those long-distance travelers would not be at West Point if they hadn’t come to see New York.
A spokesman
for Historic Hudson Valley, which operates six historic sites and runs
the Halloween festival, agrees that the city is good for business.
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“The
city has such a vibrancy and such energy from a cultural and tourism
standpoint. It’s not a problem to offer people a different experience
but a complementary experience: If you’re visiting New York or you’re a
New Yorker, come out and see what’s half an hour away.”
“Clearly,
having New York City 55 miles away is a tremendous benefit, just in
general because of the size of the population,” they said.
Rockland
County’s tourist office is planning to run TV commercials in the Bronx
and Brooklyn with the slogan, “A World Away in Your Backyard,” said the
office coordinator.
Long Island brags about its beaches, ocean
fishing and Gold Coast mansions, invoking “The Great Gatsby.” The Hudson
Valley brags about Revolutionary War history sites, its Halloween
connection and Hudson River mansions. Both say wineries, farms and fine
restaurants offer excellent dining.
The Lonely Planet travel
guide company recently ranked the Hudson Valley second among interesting
and sometimes overlooked destinations. It referred to “plenty of
farm-to-table foodie options that draw even spoiled-for-choice
Manhattanites away from the city.”
Tourist agencies’ budgets are
thin — Westchester’s is funded entirely by a portion of a hotel tax —
and some of it goes toward attracting business conferences and movie
shoots rather than sightseers. They get some help from New York state,
which includes Long Island and the Hudson Valley in some of its “I Love
New York” advertising.
There’s little cooperation between city and suburbs, however.
That
may be typical. Chicago’s “Choose Chicago” tourist campaign does not
include the suburbs, said a spokesperson. The state of Illinois,
however, includes such suburban attractions as Frank Lloyd Wright’s home
and studio in Oak Park in its promotions, said Sandra Jones of the
state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. It’s much the
same in New York.
In
the meantime, New York City will likely long remain the greatest
competitor, and the benefit therein, a steady flow of thru-traffic.
