9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero Rebounding After Pandemic

By: Benyamin Davidsons

Sunday marked the 21st anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.  Of course, there was an uptick in attendance at the national 9/11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero this Sunday.  Vice President Kamala Harris was in the Lower Manhattan museum and presided over the commemoration ceremonies.

As reported by Crain’s NY, the museum seems to be slowly starting to rebound from the light tourism experienced since the Covid-19 pandemic.  The museum had been completely shuttered for close to seven months in 2020.  It had reopened on Sept 11 of 2021.  The museum has had a hard time regaining its position and maintain foot traffic at the memorial.  In July, the eight-year-old museum welcomed roughly 185,000 visitors, and in August it had 177,000 visitors.

Before the pandemic, in July and August 2019, there had been roughly 320,000 visitors each month.  Overall, the museum has about 64 percent of the number of visitors it had before the pandemic.  In 2019, it had averaged 3 million visitors annually, in addition to the average of 6 million visitors annually for the outdoor memorial. This year, beginning in September, the museum had 1 million annual visitors, and the outdoor memorial area has had 3.9 visitors this year, according to Alice Greenwald, president and CEO of the facility.

“We’re doing pretty well. I was in the museum this morning, and it was throbbing and busy,” Greenwald said on Wednesday. “We are seeing consistently increasing attendance, and that is with fewer days and hours of being open to the public.”  She added that tourism at the memorial and museum picks up in the summer months and is substantially slower in the winter months– which is in line with overall tourism in the Big Apple.  As travel flocks back to New York, business is expected to return to the memorial as well.  NYC & Company, the city’s official tourism marketing organization, said that this year the city is slated to regain over 85 percent of its benchmark 2019 tourism levels– with the current estimate forecasting a total of 56.7 million visitors for the year. The number of international visitors is expected to triple from depressed 2021 figures, jumping to 8.3 million this year, up from 2.7 million.

As per Crain’s, over the summer, foot traffic in Times Square had rebounded nicely. In June, the Time Square neighborhood’s daily average foot traffic reached 344,133, up 103% from the levels seen in June 2021.  Big Apple Traffic for July 4th and for Labor Day were also improved. “If you look at the numbers, we’re much higher than 2021, and we’re seeing counts that are above 2019 numbers on a regular basis—which is phenomenal,” said T.J. Witham, spokesman for the Times Square Alliance, a Manhattan business improvement district.

Greenwald said the museum is proactively initiating new programs to gain attention from young Americans who didn’t experience the tragic event.