Posted on: Sunday, November 4, 2001
The September 11th attack | Coping with the aftermath
New York journey offers reality check
By Nina Siegal
Bloomberg News Service
NEW YORK — Jeanne Marrs, an advertising administrator from Dallas, said she booked a flight to New York two weeks after the World Trade Center attack because she "wanted to get here before it all got back to normal."
Marrs, looking out at the transformed New York skyline from the 86th-floor observation deck of the Empire State Building, said: "It's a big tragedy and it's all anyone is talking about in Dallas, or anywhere else. I wanted to be a part of it, to know what it's like being here."
Marrs, 38, represents a new, relatively small set of tourists who have arrived in the city since Sept. 11 undeterred by fears of air travel or anthrax bacteria. They decided to come, they said, to support the city and to glimpse what they are unable to see on television — the changed urban landscape and how New Yorkers are coping.
New York's $25 billion-a-year tourism industry lost $280 million in the five weeks after the attack, and is losing about $30 million each week, said Cristyne L. Nicholas, president of NYC & Co., the city's convention and visitors bureau.
Last year, 9.6 million visitors came to the city from September to November. Nicholas said that number is off about 30 percent.
Nicholas said she hopes the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season will help "pull us through."
Some businesses that rely on tourists — like hotels and the Broadway theater — are starting to recover, Nicholas said. Other aspects of tourism have been altered because of visitors who want to relate to the tragedy.
Manhattan Rickshaw Co., which offers pedicab rides to tourists, has changed its focus to concentrate on the financial district. Road closures and security checkpoints have limited the number of taxis in the area.
"People are trying to get downtown because they want to pay their respects," said Peter Meitzler, who manages the company. "They go down there in droves."
Thousands of tourists each day make their way to Broadway and Maiden Lane, the closest viewing point for Ground Zero. They see the remains and smoke rising from where the towers stood. Some snap photos, others leave flowers or photographs of loved ones. A few weep.
"Everyone wants to see the site; almost every group asks for it," said Dennis Onorato, 46, a tour escort with the Guide Service of New York who said he was initially uncomfortable taking groups to the site because he "didn't like the circus atmosphere."
The Circle Line cruise service, which operates boats that go around Manhattan on the Hudson and East Rivers, is averaging 400 to 500 people on each of its vessels, compared with 300 to 350 during the same time last year, said Peter Cavrell, a company spokesman. The rise comes, in part, because its tours offer views of the destruction.
"I don't know if people are trying to see something as much as just wanting to get close to feel what's going on," Cavrell said. The tour guides are "letting people just reflect on the feelings they get when they go past" the trade center site.
