Why tourists heart us

You are not imagining things—the city is being overrun. It happens every year at this time, of course. Tourists just can’t resist our holiday windows and that 84-foot-tall Norway spruce. But with the mighty greenback suffering the currency equivalent of a staph infection, we’re seeing more of them: strolling the sidewalks in horizontal lines of seven instead of three, staying in more places, from Manhattan to Brooklyn, and spending more money—much more—buying the iPods you can’t afford (yes, the 16GB ones with the 3.5-inch screens—sigh).

“I came here for this,” says the U.K.’s aptly named Gerard English, 49, holding up bags filled with $5,000 worth of jewelry from Tiffany & Co. and clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch and Niketown. In pounds, it cost him and his family half of what it costs you. “We spent more money than we anticipated simply because we got so much more bang for our buck.”

This year, a forecasted 45.5 million tourists will visit New York, 8 million of them foreign—that’s up 5 percent from last year. This is good for you, even if you hate the fanny packs and Italian mandals. International visitors generate 50 percent of all tourist spending in NYC—last year, that figure reached $12.37 billion. So as you search for discounts, worried about subprime whatevers, these visitors keep the city flush (thanks to them, your household saves $953 a year in taxes) and feed your friends (tourism employs about 368,000 people in NYC a year).

But it’s not just the anemic dollar that’s crowding our streets. Something else is going on. After all, Boston and Miami have Apple and Nike stores too, but they’re down 25 percent and 33 percent respectively in numbers of international visitors. In fact, tourism to America in general was down 11 percent last year, compared with 2000. (For some reason the ol’ US of A ain’t so popular overseas these days.)

But New York? It’s the No. 1 U.S. destination for folks from the U.K., Germany, Scandinavia, Brazil, Russia—hell, even France. They like us. They really like us. So what do all those people see in us (besides a fire sale, that is)? To find out, TONY hooked up with foreign nationals (plus a few chicks from Arizona), riding shotgun on their postcardesque–New York itineraries. And then we gave them a real tour—feel free to steal the ideas for your own guests. In the end, everybody learned something about one another (aww) and began to share this city like friends. And true friends buy each other 16GB iPods. Hint hint.

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