Cond Nast Traveler proclaims theres nothing cooler than being among the first at the hippest spots in the city
April 1, 2011 In its April issue, Cond Nast Traveler proclaims Brooklyn one of the 15 best places to see in the world right now. The publication urges travelers to check out Brooklyns trendy bars, restaurants, galleries and shops.
What more evidence do you need that Brooklyn is not only proud home to everyone from everywhere, but proud host to everyone from everywhere, said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. Since the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center in Brooklyn Borough Hall opened seven years ago, we have partnered with NYC & Co. and Brooklyns cultural institutions, hotels and restaurants to make sure visitors to New York City stay and play in Brooklyn. If they want to take a day trip into Manhattan, thats okay, too! Of course, they dont need to leave Brooklyn, which has treasures such as Brooklyn Bridge Park, Prospect Park, Coney Island, a world-renowned book festival, two major summer concert series, and festivals and parades including the West-Indian American Day Carnival, New York Citys second biggest parade. Theres more than enough to keep visitors busy right here in Brooklyn.
Last year, New York City welcomed a record 48.7 million visitors who collectively spent $31 billionpart of the overall success of NYC tourism can be attributed to the emergence of Brooklyn as a popular and vibrant NYC destination, said NYC & Co. CEO George Fertitta. Borough President Marty Markowitzs leadership has been instrumental in growing Brooklyns tourism industryhe created the first visitors center outside Manhattan to further promote all that this exciting borough has to offer.
Cond Nast attributes Brooklyns decade-long rise to hot spot to the influx of stylish immigrants who have helped reshape Brooklyn by transforming dive bars into wineries, abandoned warehouses into playhouses, and a gothic bank building into a massive flea market.
Brooklyn is the most forward-looking, energetic cultural destination in New York City, from art galleries, to free summer concert series, and of course, our own range of programs here at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, said BAM President Karen Brooks Hopkins. The world is seeing what weve known in Brooklyn for a long time: Brooklyn is the best place in the world to create and consume art!
To read the full Cond Nast Traveler article: www.concierge.com/cntraveler/articles/503536?all=yes.
For more information on The Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center, go to www.visitbrooklyn.org.
Background on the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center
The Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center is just one of many tourism platforms managed by the Office of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, often in partnership with the nonprofit Best of Brooklyn. Since 2002, when Harvard professor Michael Porters study, Initiative for a Competitive Brooklyn, identified tourism as one of the boroughs four major economic growth clusters, BP Markowitz has made tourism an economic development prioritycommissioning the blueprint Marketing Brooklyn to Brooklyn and Brooklyn to the World; forming the Brooklyn Tourism Advisory Board to advise and inform the development of the tourism industry in Brooklyn; providing support though capital funding (e.g., Weeksville Heritage Center, BAM and many other projects); land use and zoning powers (Downtown Brooklyn Plan, Coney Island, etc.); leadership; partnership; and advocacy.
Successes have included the opening and expansion of information services such as the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center, the Summer Brooklyn Tourism Pushcarts program and Brooklyn Tourism Kiosk inside the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, the LIRRs Atlantic Terminal station as well as the award-winning visitbrooklyn.org website (which features consumer and trade components, and gets approximately 250,000 visits each year).
Destination Brooklyn events include the annual and expanding Dine in Brooklyn Restaurant Week, the internationally prestigious Brooklyn Book Festival, the smART Brooklyn Art Gallery Hop and the Shop Brooklyn retail outreach campaign.
Brooklyn Tourism also promotes Brooklyn at tourism trade shows, hosts tourism stakeholder workshops, bids on conferences to promote Brooklyn as a host city and offers familiarization tours of Brooklyn to tour operators and journalists. This has resulted in successes such as Brooklyn tours, hotels and attractions being added to national and international tour operator sales packages; the acquisition of conferences for groups like WYSTC (World Youth Student Tourism Conference), bringing 800 professional organizers of international student travel to the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge; and assisting the Little People of America with a weeklong conference in Brooklyn.
Since 2005, Brooklyn Tourism provided familiarization tours and other assistance for over 60 articles in national/international magazines and newspapers. The total circulation of these publications was more than 22,000,000.
Lonely Planet, which named Brooklyn one of the world’s hottest destinations in 2007, chose it to be one of the first pullout mini guides in its inaugural, international Lonely Planet Magazine in December 2008, alongside Edinburgh, Scotland and Singapore. In September 2009, Britains Daily Mail urged visitors to leave Manhattan to the tourists, Brooklyn is New Yorks real gem. In November 2010, National Geographic encouraged readers to visit Brooklyn for cool shops, pop-up art galleries and authentic eats.
CONTACT: Mark Zustovich 718-802-3830; mzustovich@brooklynbp.nyc.gov
