Europeans “dreamed” of it: after 20 months of the closure of American borders due to the pandemic, New York is reopening its arms to visitors from the Old Continent even if the Big Apple will only regain its pre-crisis tourist effervescence in 2024.
On November 8, the United States finally lifted its “travel ban” on “non-essential” foreign visitors from around thirty countries, including those in the European Schengen area, the United Kingdom, and China. , India or Russia. On the condition of being fully vaccinated.
And in recent days, the island of Manhattan – the world’s economic lung and international tourist magnet – has been much more lively, with the beginnings of a return from Europeans.
Like Eglantine Lasserre, a 40-year-old Bordeaux woman, who took the first plane from France on Monday: “New York has always been a dream. When I heard about the reopening of the borders, I jumped at the opportunity and arrived directly on November 8 “, she tells AFP with a smile, in the midst of the famous scenery of giant advertising screens in Times Square.
– Urban mosaic –
Alexis Maynier too, a 33-year-old farmer in Aveyron, strolls for the very first time on Broadway, 5th Avenue and in the meanders of Central Park, under the azure blue sky and the beautiful autumn light of the East Coast. the United States.
With his wife Camille, they felt “very constrained” by nearly two years of pandemic in France, “wanted to resume more normal activities and to take advantage” of the incredible urban mosaic that form New York and its five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island).
In fact, “tourism is the economic engine” of the largest city in the United States, says Chris Heywood, vice president of NYC & Company, the city’s tourism board.
In 2019, New York had welcomed “66.6 million visitors” American and foreign, representing an economic weight of “70 billion dollars” and “403,000 jobs”, details for AFP the person in charge, in a metropolis of more of eight million inhabitants and whose municipal budget covers 100 billion dollars.
With “8.5 million international visitors” expected in 2022, Chris Heywood recognizes that New York will need “a few years to be fully back” in the global tourism competition against Paris, London or Rome.
“We are counting on the end of 2024 to return to the levels of 2019,” he predicts.
– New York has come a long way –
In fact, the city has come a long way.
In 2020, New York was unrecognizable: the arteries of Manhattan deserted for weeks like in a science fiction film, the hospital and funeral services overwhelmed by a Covid-19 epidemic that has killed at least 34,000 people, the inhabitants holed up and self-confined to their homes with only essential shopping for outing.
Rafael Delazari, a Brazilian sexagenarian living in Sardinia has also experienced the pandemic and the “confinements” in Italy hard. He therefore reserved in New York and its mythical Empire State Building his first trip abroad for nearly two years, happy to be “in the capital of the world”.
Traumatized by the epidemic, New York has been imposing vaccination on its visitors since September for its museums, theaters, restaurants …
Nothing but very normal for Eglantine Lasserre: “We feel completely safe and we would even tend to forget everything we have been through and suddenly it feels good”.
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