New York City Tourism Hurt by Omicron

The surge of the COVID-19 Omicron variant late last year and into January of this year did enough to prevent New York City from reaching its expected visitor target for 2021, the New York Times reported.

NYC & Company, the city's main tourism agency, worked diligently to bolster tourism with a variety of programs and events. The agency said in October that it should finish 2021 with 34.6 million tourists coming to New York City.

But that was right around the time that Omicron started heating up, with a drastic surge in positive cases not only in the city but around the world that once again affected travel.

Instead, the Times reported that 32.9 million tourists visited New York in 2021, about 1.7 million less than expected.

While that number exceeded the number of tourists who made NYC a destination 2020 by 47 percent - the first full year of the pandemic - it was still less than half of the 66 million people who traveled to the city in 2019.

A soft January of 2022 also forced NYC & Company to temper its original predictions for the number of tourists this year. the tourism agency projected 57.8 million visitors but now says it will be more like 56.5 million.

But hotel occupancy rates appear to be inching back up now that Omicron seems to be dwindling.

"If you want some good news, it is that tourists or leisure travelers are returning pretty much in force," Sean Hennessey, a professor at New York University, told the Times. "And amazingly enough, they are in many cases willing to pay more for a night's room than they were prior to Covid. But the return to the office has gone slowly, and that has dampened expectations of a robust rebound in corporate travel."