I never thought I'd say this, but I will actually miss the NYC tourists. You know, those brightly clad, Google Maps-wielding, friendly folks who cheerfully ask where the A train is without realizing they are now likely doomed to wait for 35 minutes on an airless platform for said A train. Oh, tourists, we hardly knew ye — and now ye are avoiding our fair city entirely, all because of a certain billionaire politician. And who could blame you?
The New York Times reports that New York City is expected to see 300,000 fewer international tourists this year than in 2016, and city officials are chalking it up to Trump. The city's tourism marketing agency re-released its projected 2017 numbers this week, and those pertaining to international visitors are much lower than when they were originally calculated in October. Gee, wonder if anything egregious or, I dunno, unconstitutional happened between October and today to make foreigners feel unwelcome in this country.
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Agency executive Fred Dixon told The Times that since the president's various disheartening remarks (or rather, disheartening tweets) and executive orders, prospective tourists are changing their travel plans to avoid Trump territory. Dixon expects NYC tourism will start to plummet this summer in particular: “That’s when you’ll see the rhetoric out of Washington really having an impact on travel...Regardless of the specifics, it’s pretty clear the message is going to be unwelcoming."
The decrease in tourism is expected to cost NYC businesses more than $600 million in sales.
As for whether Trump's as-of-now quashed plan to ban travelers from predominantly Muslim countries will stay quashed, Dixon says he and his colleagues are “just sort of holding our breath." So is the rest of New York — and most of America.