New2NY: Play Nice with Tourists, It's Better for Your Bank Account

It’s that time of year again – holiday season. The city overflows with tourists meandering through the wind-tunnels of streets, eyes focused everywhere but the sidewalk. Subways fill with map-laden passengers who don’t know how to properly squeeze and make room for others during the Monday morning rush.

Fortunately for me, I always escaped the Thanksgiving rush in Boston, leaving for the suburbs just before everyone would arrive to the largest city closest to the Pilgrim’s landing point. Thus, now living in NYC, this is my first experience with a tourist holiday in a tourist city.

With the state of the economy, I wishfully expected a slight lull in holiday traveling. But, oh no, people will never stop coming to worship the neon of Times Square and the golden Atlas of Rockefeller Plaza. I spoke with a man named Nain (pronounced nay-en), who owns and manages the café downstairs from where I work. He told me that if anything, the number of tourists has increased. The sad difference for him though – they are not spending as much money.

Well, traveling on a budget has always been big. You can’t take the curiosity out of adventurous travelers, but you can take the money out of their wallets. So we have the current dilemma of all these tourists running wild down the streets and subways of Manhattan, but less of an economic benefit. At least when they were spending hoards of money on black and white cookies and Ray’s pizza, the locals would put up with the annoyance because of the massive inflows of money. Alas, now we must cope with these outsiders even though they are no longer funding our summer concert series or our mailmen.

But hey, it’s the holidays. Sometimes I think I’m too hard on tourists, knowing that I used to be one not that long ago. Also, I realize that they don’t even have to travel, but at least they are doing what they can. Some support is better than none especially for New York City – I’m sure those that lived here through 2001-2002 really know that.

So I’d like to put forth the thought that we should all be nice to tourists this holiday season, because everyone is suffering through the economic downturn, as we have come to call it, and the tourists, big cameras and all, are doing their best to help us out. Embrace those that walk through don’t-walk signs, love those that order enormously large corned beef sandwiches from overpriced delis, and thank those that may accidentally on-purpose steal your cab.

Happy almost Thanksgiving!