Locals have long believed that New York City is the best destination in the United States, and it appears as if people in the rest of the country are catching on.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg released statistics this week showing that the city drew a record-breaking 48.7 million visitors in 2010, which proves that its status as the United States city with the most number of tourists in 2009 could very well be held for a second year in a row.

Certain New Yorkers also like to complain about the increasing number of tourists in the city, but they are an important part of keeping the city operating. The estimated economic value generated by those visitors in 2010: $31 billion, which supported restaurants, shops, hotels and cultural institutions.

The higher-than-projected 6.8 percent increase in visitors over 2009 keeps the city on pace to meet its goal of attracting 50 million annual visitors by 2012—a goal set by the Bloomberg administration in 2007, prior to the national recession.

The year 2010 also saw an unprecedented number of new hotels opening in New York as well, which helped the hospitality industry add 6,600 jobs over the past year, employing more New Yorkers in 2010 than ever before. In 2010, New York City set a record for hotel rooms added and hotel rooms sold, while attendance at cultural institutions rose.

Additional key figures released this week:

• 39 million of the visitors were from the United States; 9.7 million were from abroad. Both figures are new records.
• The hospitality industry added 6,600 jobs over the past year across all industry sub-sectors. The industry employs the most people in summer, and July 2010 set a all-time record for total jobs with 323,200. The annualized average jobs for 2010 through November was 315,000, an all-time high, and all of 2010 is expected to set the new record when December job data is released later this month.
• 25.7 million room nights were sold, a new record, exceeding the previous high by 2 million room nights.
• A net total of nearly 7,000 new hotel rooms were added to the city’s inventory, a 7 percent increase over 2009.
• Average daily room rates rose to $330 in December 2010, an 8.9 percent increase over 2009.
• New York City’s 1,200 nonprofit cultural organizations, which generate an estimated $18 billion in economic activity due to tourism, reported an average attendance increase of 5 percent.
• Broadway attendance so far this season is above 7.55 million, up 3.8 percent from this point last season.

“The strength of our tourism industry is one of the reasons New York City was less impacted by the national recession than other cities, and it continues to be one of the reasons we’re growing faster than other cities today,” said Bloomberg. “We’re constantly looking for ways to strengthen and diversify our economy, and growing our tourism industry is an important part of that work.”

Photo credit: Courtesy of NYC Go.