More than 1,300 people who work in New York City tourism and hospitality have signed a letter asking the City Council and the Mamdani administration to raise the city’s tourism marketing budget to $35 million in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget, as first reported by the Queens Gazette. It would be the first increase in city funding for the tourism agency since 2006.
The agency, NYC Tourism + Conventions, is the city’s dedicated marketing organization, and it announced the letter as budget negotiations pick up. Its current FY27 baseline funding is $22.7 million. The ask of $35 million is a $12.3 million bump, and the number has not moved in nearly two decades.
The pitch from the signers is that tourism money pays for itself. The industry generated $7.5 billion in state and local tax revenue last year and roughly $85 billion in total economic impact, and it supports close to 10 percent of the city’s workforce.
“Properly funding tourism is one of the most powerful revenue-generating mechanisms available for New York City,” the signers write. “Every dollar invested in driving visitation translates into economic activity, jobs, and tax revenue that supports essential services.”
The people who signed on are not just agency members. The list runs across major cultural institutions, Broadway and live entertainment groups, hotels, restaurants, business improvement districts, sports and events organizations, and small businesses in all five boroughs.
The comparison the industry keeps returning to is how little the city spends against its competitors. New York trails smaller cities like Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago in international marketing spending, and it is dwarfed by Las Vegas, which puts $426 million into tourism, and Orlando, which spends $117 million.
For anyone in Ridgewood or the rest of Queens, the borough-level numbers are the part worth watching. Tourism and hospitality supported more than 56,000 jobs in Queens in 2024, according to Tourism Economics, and drives business for the borough’s restaurants, retail, transportation providers, hotels and cultural institutions.
The agency argues that a bigger budget would spread visitor spending past Manhattan and into neighborhood commercial corridors. It points to the Queens Night Market as a direct example, on the logic that tourists who show up for one thing end up spending at the businesses around it. Extra money, the agency says, would go toward expanded domestic and international marketing, media outreach, and local resources for events like the Queens Night Market, plus digital campaigns, neighborhood guides, social media and international travel partnerships promoting Queens’ small businesses, restaurants, parks and cultural groups.
The request now sits with the City Council and the Mamdani administration as they hammer out the FY27 budget.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily image
