Since November 8, 2021, the day the travel ban (the travel ban) jumped, international tourism exploded in the United States, and in New York in particular. The end of the obligation to wear a mask on 1is July ended up ensuring, despite a still-vivid Covid, an exceptional season for Broadway shows, museums, bars and restaurants. So much so that in 2022 the city should approach the records of 2019, with nearly 57 million visitors (against 33 million last year and 22 million two years ago).
“The tourists are back!” Rejoiced in a daily New York Postwhile the magazine Time Out published its annual ranking of cities the most popular on the planet. The survey, conducted among 27,000 residents around the world, named New York as the city that travelers most want to visit this year, followed by Tokyo and Paris. According The Citystaying in a New York hotel cost an average of $309 per night in early summer, the highest rate in the United States after Hawaii and the Florida Keys.
Big Apple is coming a long way! New York and Manhattan in particular have been hit hard by the virus. Not only do its inhabitants remain traumatized by the memory of the line of hearses going up Park Avenue day and night throughout the spring of 2020, but the authorities draw a grim toll from the coronavirus: 41,000 dead, 2.7 million people infected, some 1,000 restaurants and 10,000 hotel rooms missing bodies and belongings, one in three companies went bankrupt.
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The scars of the crisis are still vivid, especially in lower Manhattan. Hundreds of doorsteps are for rent. Like that of Eisenberg. Born during the Great Depression, famous for its pastrami sandwiches, this institution located in Midtown, opposite the Flat Iron Building, succumbed without warning to the pandemic. The space is still vacant.
“Outdoor dining”: a new habit born with the Covid
The same clap of the end for the large nearby Marimekko store, flagship of the Finnish designer, closes definitively on Christmas Day 2021. Further down, down Fifth Avenue, Otto, a glamorous Italian restaurant in the East Village, has also closed. , as well as a few other essentials in the neighborhood: the luxury caterer Agata & Valentina, the Lebanese counter Nanoosh, the collective offices WeWork and the Nutella café, just inaugurated just before the arrival of the Covid. The association of merchants The Village Alliance is sorry “For two years, one sign in four has disappeared without being replaced”. And even one out of 3 on the 300 meters of the very busy 8th street between Broadway and University Place!
The virus has also created new habits, in particular the appearance of “outdoor dining”, (eating outside), meaning ephemeral terraces, kinds of semi-hard extensions, very generously decorated. “They give our streets a little air of Europe,” notes Mary Jean Gianquinto, real estate agent for the luxury broker Corcoran.
“Terraces have become a custom, confirms Bernard Collin, manager of the very chic French restaurant La Goulue. But people go out earlier, we serve dinner at 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.. The fault is the fear of violence, which has once again become the primary concern of New Yorkers, as in the 1980s.
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In the very charming West Village the police report an 80% increase in attacks, murders and rapes in one year. Even Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon said on August 15 that he felt less safe, “in this city that has become a little more sordid and a little dirtier”. Unoccupied offices for months and meals served outside on ephemeral terraces attract not very shy rats.
City recovery plan
Today the new Gotham calls for the back to normal (back to normal). Many companies have rehired employees laid off during the crisis, but few have recovered their entire workforce. Office space rented in Manhattan is still 30% lower than before the pandemic and surveys show that 49% of employees plan to continue working remotely. According to Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford, the city could eventually lose 5 to 10% of its employees.
“The virus has only precipitated a movement that began several years ago, underlines economist Carol O’Cleiacain. Specialist in urban planning, professor at Columbia University in New York, she was also deputy mayor of Detroit. New technologies have changed the behavior of employees, but also of consumers. Their purchases on the Internet have finished condemning many shops.” Clothing brands Brooklyn Industries and Ann Taylor no longer have a single store in town.
In March, Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York launched a plan for the revival of the city, Rebuild Renew Reinvent (rebuild, renovate, reinvent). A vast fair of ideas made it possible to deploy 70 concrete actions to develop new neighborhoods and new activities, such as recreational cannabis. For nearly a year, it has become legal, to the point that in the streets of the Village and the Lower East Side now floats permanently the smell of joint. “Smoking Pot”, say the locals.
A resilient city
Specialist in high-end real estate in Brooklyn, Mary Jean Gianquinto sees many of her clients return, who at the height of the pandemic had immigrated to the south, Florida and Texas in particular, sunnier and less concerned about social distancing. “Since then, both sale and rental prices have soared, especially as with the dragging on virus, individuals and businesses are looking for larger areas.” Even if her city is recovering less quickly from the Covid than Miami, Dallas or Houston, the New Yorker is optimistic. “We’ve always gotten away with it! See how we’ve weathered the shocks: 9/11, the financial crisis, Hurricane Sandy.” The city is resilient, abounds the photographer Stefan Falke who has dedicated a book to the convalescent city: Keep Going New York!!. The magnificent shots of the book are exhibited at NYU (New York University) until the end of September. Then the exhibition will cross the Atlantic. Enough to encourage even more tourists to offer themselves a comeback in this metropolis which is in the process of reviving its nickname: “the city that never sleeps”.
