Postcard from New York: The warm, friendly, iconic NYC is open for business

Vari­ous com­ment­at­ors have voiced con­cerns that the United States of Amer­ica (USA) is los­ing its tour­ism appeal due to tight­er visa rules and increased scru­tiny at cus­toms and bor­der entry.

Labour short­ages in hos­pit­al­ity and unfa­vour­able exchange rates are mak­ing travel more expensive.

Accord­ing to the World Travel & Tour­ism Coun­cil (WTTC), the USA — with the largest travel & tour­ism sec­tor in the world — is the only coun­try among 184 eco­nom­ies ana­lysed in a recent report that is fore­cast to see inter­na­tion­al vis­it­or spend­ing decline in 2025. Read the report.

About the author

Jeff Wilks is an Aus­trali­an psy­cho­lo­gist spe­cial­ising in travel health, safety, and wellbeing.

Dr Wilks has also writ­ten for 
The “Good Tour­ism” Blog.

While oth­er coun­tries are rolling out the red car­pet for inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors there are sug­ges­tions that the US is put­ting up the ‘closed’ sign.

As recent vis­it­ors to New York, this was not our experience.

Quite the con­trary, ser­vice was excep­tion­al and con­sist­ent, with warm and friendly hosts at attrac­tions, tours, res­taur­ants, and sport­ing events.

Safety and spectacle

Like many tour­ists in New York over the Christmas/New Year peri­od, a key fea­ture of our vis­it was the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop in Times Square.

Around one mil­lion people pack the square for this event and the on-site crowd is joined by over a bil­lion glob­al view­ers watch­ing on TV.

There was a huge and highly vis­ible police pres­ence but we saw no secur­ity incid­ents; indeed we felt incred­ibly safe. It was an amaz­ing experience.

Secur­ity was also tight at oth­er icon­ic attrac­tions such as the Empire State Build­ing, Madis­on Square Garden (for Knicks games and Rangers ice hockey), the Met­ro­pol­it­an Museum of Art (the Met), and at Broad­way theatres, with often long lines for entry.

But crowd con­trol was excel­lent and so were the staff.

The Met wel­comed over 5.7 mil­lion vis­it­ors in 2025 while the Empire State Build­ing hos­ted around four million.

Cel­eb­rat­ing their 100th anniversary, the Radio City Rock­ettes’ 2025 Christ­mas Spec­tac­u­lar saw the production’s highest attend­ance in 25 years. More than 1.2 mil­lion tick­ets have been sold across the 216 per­form­ances of the show.

Experience is everything

These fig­ures reflect the evolving role of exper­i­ences in travel, where the range and qual­ity of loc­al activ­it­ies is a strong determ­in­ant of des­tin­a­tion choice. Read more from McKin­sey.

Broad­way shows in New York are a good example.

In the 2024 – 2025 sea­son, Broad­way attend­ances totalled 14.66 mil­lion, the second highest fig­ure in recor­ded his­tory. Read the report.

We were for­tu­nate to see Wicked and The Book of Mor­mon; both exceptional.

New York is recog­nised as the most expens­ive city in Amer­ica but not all of its attrac­tions are costly. Explor­ing Cent­ral Park, walk­ing or bik­ing across the Brook­lyn Bridge, and strolling above Man­hat­tan streets on the High Line are all free.

Then there are the must-sees: the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter Christ­mas Tree, which is an icon­ic NYC hol­i­day sym­bol, typ­ic­ally a Nor­way spruce adorned with 50,000+ LED lights and topped with a huge Swarovski crys­tal star.

And of course, ice skat­ing in Cent­ral Park.

The kindness of strangers

What sur­prised and delighted us most was the kind­ness and spon­tan­eous engage­ment of loc­al res­id­ents, and also of Amer­ic­an tour­ists from oth­er parts of the coun­try vis­it­ing New York. In lifts, queuing for events, in shops, and res­taur­ants, people took the time to inter­act, espe­cially if they heard an accent.

Pat­thawee Insuwan­no has recently writ­ten about the power of kind­ness and the impact of loc­al hos­pit­al­ity on tour­ists’ inten­tion to revis­it a destination. 

Of the three region­al groups he stud­ied (Asia, Ocean­ia, and West­ern), vis­it­ors from Ocean­ia con­sist­ently repor­ted high­er per­cep­tions of loc­als’ kind­ness, stronger emo­tion­al bond­ing, and high­er revis­it inten­tion. Read the study.

As Aus­trali­ans, this res­on­ates with us.

The Aus­trali­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­por­a­tion (ABC) repor­ted in mid-2025 that Aus­trali­ans were defy­ing the glob­al down­turn in travel to the US.

Pro­jec­tions are for 68+ mil­lion inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors to New York in 2025 as glob­al tour­ism con­tin­ues to recov­er post-COVID. 

Fur­ther evid­ence that recov­ery is well under­way comes with New York recently named Best City (World­wide) at The Times and The Sunday Times 2025 Travel Awards, based on the votes of more than 910,000 readers.

If kind­ness, excel­lent ser­vice, and icon­ic attrac­tions are meas­ures of tour­ism suc­cess then New York is def­in­itely ‘open’ for business.

New York, New York
I want to wake up in a city
That nev­er sleeps 

_ Frank Sinatra, 1979

Featured pic (top of post)

Jeff Wilks and fam­ily in Times Square, New York, for New Year 2026 cel­eb­ra­tions. The warm, friendly, icon­ic city is well and truly open for busi­ness accord­ing to Dr Wilks.

Where is this?

The pin on the “GT” Travel map that rep­res­ents this “GT” Travel Exper­i­ence points to Times Square, New York.

Where next?