Tourists Slowly Returning to New York

Paul Douglas represents the dilemma that has become Manhattan tourism.

Two times this week, the vacationing Fullerton department store manager came, video camera in hand, to view the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center. But his wife stayed away.

“She didn’t want to be a gawking tourist,” said Douglas, adding that he was drawn by historical and cultural reasons to the site of America’s worst peacetime tragedy: “To try to grasp, in this surreal environment, so much destruction and yet get a vibe for the city, a vibe for the people, a vibe for what’s going on.”

There are two reasons to be a tourist in New York these days--either to see the handiwork of terrorism, or to defy it.

But whatever the motivation, the numbers of free-spending sightseers are down. And that has prompted city and state officials to launch a number of promotions urging nervous travelers to show their patriotism by giving the local economy a helping hand, as long as it clutches a credit card.

“I get calls every day for people who want to help and my response is: Come to the city, go to restaurants, see a Broadway show, ride in a taxi and do all the things that you would normally do to help bring this city back to where it was,” said E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the local New York State Restaurant Assn. chapter.

There are early signs that people are starting to do just that. But the city’s $25-billion-a-year tourism industry has a long way to go to shake the effects of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hotels are running at half their typical occupancy. Some restaurants are virtually empty at a time usually considered one of the city’s busiest. The estimated economic loss during the first 11 days after the World Trade Center towers collapsed: $164 million.

As a result, layoffs have been widespread and discounts abound. Even the venerable Waldorf-Astoria Hotel has slashed its regular rates of $350-$400 a night to $189 until Sunday, when a new promotion kicks in.

But there are signs that tourists are heeding New York’s call. Double-decker tour buses are slowly starting to fill up again. On Broadway, where four shows closed because of sparse audiences after the Sept. 11 attacks, theater-goers are returning, although not in the same numbers as last year at this time.

The signs are encouraging enough that Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani--who has begged Americans to come to his city to spend money--predicted Friday that a lot of people will come to New York for the Columbus Day weekend.

Among them will be nearly 1,000 Oregonians, including the mayor of Portland, who are traveling here together as a show of support. Their message is emblazoned on T-shirts: “Oregon (Heart) New York.”

The tour was arranged by Sho Dozono, 57, a Portland travel agent who said he wanted to show New York that Oregonians care. They thought maybe 250 people would be interested, but ended up selling 950 packages, which include $110 a night for a double-occupancy room at the Waldorf, and dubbed the effort “Flight for Freedom.” The publicity earned the Oregonians an invitation from Giuliani’s office to march in the Columbus Day Parade.

“The message to the rest of America is that we have to go back to living,” said Dozono, also chairman of the Portland Chamber of Commerce. “We have to take our lives back and do what we were doing as ordinary citizens before Sept. 11.”

Radio spots already put out by the Broadway community are trumpeting that theme. Featuring stars like Nathan Lane of “The Producers,” they ask patrons to see a show as an “act of defiance,” said Patty Haubner, spokeswoman for the League of American Theaters and Producers.

On Tuesday, Gov. George Pataki announced a $40-million advertising blitz reviving the “I (Heart) New York” campaign. And officials at NYC and Company, the city’s visitors and convention bureau, are moving up the date of their annual “Paint the Town Red” campaign, designed to draw tourists during the slow January-February period. The renamed “Paint the Town Red, White and Blue” campaign will kick off Nov. 5.

Delta Air Lines has sweetened the pot by announcing it will donate 10,000 free plane tickets to New York through contests on radio stations and on its Web site.

The boosterism comes even amid signs that New York’s tourist trade is rebounding. Broadway’s gross receipts and attendance are up; last week, shows grossed $9 million and drew 160,000--slightly under the $10 million and 181,000 attendance pre-Sept. 11.

Hotel occupancy rates, which took their worst fall since 1933, have climbed from the 20%-30% range immediately after the attack to about 45%. That is still about half of the usual 85%. Hoteliers report that groups canceling in fright last month are calling back to rebook in November and December.

That’s good news to people like Peter Ward, business manager of the New York union local that represents 25,000 hourly hotel workers, including housekeepers and laundry employees. About 5,000 were laid off because of the drop in tourist traffic.

“They’re the deepest layoffs that we’ve experienced in . . . 20 years,” said Ward. “We’re concerned, but we’re hopeful that business is going to come back in November and December.”

Gray Line tours laid off one-third of its 300 dispatchers, guides and drivers as well. This week it was operating 19 double-decker buses instead of the normal 35, said Michael Alvich, the line’s vice president of sales and marketing.

But things are looking up. “Every single day, we’re seeing the passenger loads increase,” Alvich said.

On a recent weekday, the passengers on one Gray Line bus filled only half the choice seats up top, but they were resolute in their purpose.

“We already booked before this great tragedy happened and we felt that if we canceled, in some ways, we were giving in to terrorism,” said Eileen Evans, 68, of Wales. “So we’ve decided after quite a bit of thinking we should come, so we’ve come.”

Evans and her friend, 70-year-old Sheila Fearby, also of Wales, said they felt slightly guilty enjoying themselves “amongst this carnage.” Neither expressed interest in actually seeing the World Trade Center.

But they are in the minority, according to driver Roland Evans, 43. Most of the tourists who are returning to Gray Line are asking him for walking directions to the site.

Johann Alberts, 58, an accountant from Pretoria, South Africa, was one of them. After returning from the site, he described it as “actually shocking.”

Did he consider it morbid that tourists want to see the charred and mangled remains of the building?

“I don’t think so,” Alberts said after a moment’s thought. “It’s more people realizing what happened. You see that people are sad. No one’s jumping for joy.”