News

The hotel industry is still struggling to recover from the effects of the pandemic, and its lobbying group has an idea for the city to consider: lower the occupancy tax rate.

The New York City Council is so concerned about the sluggish recovery of the Big Apple’s $100 billion tourism market from COVID-19 that it’s considering dramatically slashing the local hotel tax to spur a faster rebound, The Post has learned.

You can see tourism's return in the streets of NYC and data supports it, particularly on the business travel front.

World-famous New York Hotel and tourism industry It has surged sharply to return to its pre-pandemic glory days — travel revenue for the hotel business is expected to be 55% lower in the Big Apple market this year than in 2019, a new sobering industry analysis reveals.

American cities lost billions of dollars in business travel revenue between 2019 and 2022 due to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19.

New York’s world-renowned hotel and tourism industry has a steep climb to bounce back to its pre-pandemic glory days — with hotel business travel revenue expected to be 55% lower in the Big Apple market this year than in 2019, a sobering new industry analysis reveals.

Althea Matthews, a Bronx-based affordable housing activist, has been homeless since losing her apartment in a fire in December 2019. She currently lives in a single room in a homeless shelter and is grateful that it’s safe and mostly clean — especially compared to congregate shelters. Still, she wishes that she didn’t have to share a bathroom with other residents, and she has avoided using the kitchen since repeatedly seeing mice on the stove.

A mass shooting on the New York City subway in Brooklyn last week put at least 29 people in in the hospital and the entire city on edge. It was also yet another piece of evidence pointing to the decline of the subway as a reliable and safe function of city life, the city’s real estate and business leaders say, and a stark reminder of what is at stake if the vital transit system's safety doesn't improve.

In February, more than 5,000 employees of the technology giant Salesforce met — in person — at the Javits Center in Manhattan. That was a significant high point in what John Fitzpatrick, owner and operator of two Fitzpatrick hotels in Manhattan, calls “a roller coaster” for New York City since the onset of the pandemic.

A week after opening for applications, several hundred businesses have applied for grants from a $100 million state program meant to offset the cost of rehiring tourism-sector employees as the industry recovers.