By: Jordan Baker

New York City welcomed slightly more tourists in 2025 than the year before, but the modest uptick masked a deeper problem: Gotham is still struggling to reclaim its pre-pandemic crown as a global travel powerhouse. A new report paints a sobering picture of an industry weighed down by weak international demand, economic uncertainty, and souring sentiment toward travel to the United States.

As the New York Post first reported, the city drew 64.7 million visitors in 2025 — a marginal 0.3% increase from 2024 — but well below projections and far short of the long-hyped goal of reaching 67 million tourists. The total also failed to surpass the pre-COVID high of 66.6 million visitors recorded in 2019, according to the annual report from New York City Tourism + Conventions.

The shortfall was driven largely by a sharp pullback from overseas travelers. The city’s official tourism arm warned that “tariffs and negative rhetoric” surrounding travel to the U.S. weakened international tourism by nearly 5% compared to 2024, the New York Post reported. International visitation slipped from 12.9 million last year to just 12.3 million in 2025 — a troubling sign for a city that relies heavily on foreign spending.

“Western European markets are expected to decline modestly as tariffs and negative sentiment towards US travel continue to affect plans,” the report stated, underscoring the fragile outlook. Visitors from Canada were hit particularly hard, with declines also projected from Germany, France, Mexico, Spain, China and the United Kingdom, according to figures cited by the Post.

Those trends were already visible by the fall. In October alone, Canadian travel to the U.S. dropped sharply, with arrivals by air down 24% and automobile visits plunging 31% year over year, according to the city comptroller’s office, as noted by the New York Post.

For tourism operators on the ground, the impact has been immediate and painful. “The internationals weren’t coming,” Matt Levy, owner of Spread Love Tours, told the Post. Levy said he typically books dozens of Canadian high school groups each spring — but only two followed through this year. Domestic group bookings also slid dramatically, falling from around 30 trips in prior years to just a dozen in 2025.

Alarmed by the trend, NYC Tourism + Conventions revised its outlook midway through the year following a noticeable shift after the 2024 presidential election. As the New York Post first reported, the agency now projects about 66 million visitors in 2026 — still more than half a million shy of the city’s 2019 record. That forecast includes 12.7 million international travelers, suggesting only a slow and fragile recovery.

There was one bright spot: domestic tourism. Leisure travel from within the U.S. rose roughly 1.5% year over year, pushing domestic visitor totals to 52.2 million in 2025. That number is expected to climb again in 2026 and finally exceed pre-pandemic levels, the Post reported.