From the Daily News:A Queens professor hopes his students can help solve a riddle this summer that has confounded the borough's tourism experts for decades.
James Giordano will challenge his marketing class at LaGuardia Community College to devise plans to convince tourists who visit New York City to spend at least one day of their stay in Queens.
Giordano will forward the ideas to the Queens Economic Development Corp., which is slated to kick off its "75 Days of Summer" campaign today with help from Giordano's students.
Students will also visit area hotels and hot spots, hoping to convince them to offer discounts that could attract even more tourists.
Organizers are betting the students will offer fresh perspectives on pitching the borough to visitors through social media like Facebook and Twitter.
Stoddart said the borough will also re-launch the Queens Tourism Council, a collective of cultural groups and sites that fell inactive in recent years.
It's an effort to capitalize on droves of tourists who fly into Queens airports and stay at local hotels but spend most of their time and money in Manhattan.
Queens is where people live, not a place for outsiders to come to gawk. It's about time the city understood that and provided for the taxpayers instead of focusing on tourists all the time.
27 comments:
I live in Queens but when I want to do some sightseeing, I usually go to Manhattan or sometimes Brooklyn.
I've traveled as far as New Jersey to enjoy a first class entertainment experience at the magical, ornate Loew's Jersey movie palace.
An ATTRACTION will draw people.
But, alas, Queens is so UNATTRACTIVE!
What's to see that's left in Queens?
The Manes & Shulman team sold out our future to developers.
Are we surrounded with great architecture?
Do we have superb theater or fantastic world class museums?
A resounding, NO!
So why should French, German, Italian, Russian, etc. tourists waste their time or money touring our bereft boondocks if I wouldn't myself?
It's a great place to live-----
but to visit?
I think not.
Yawn...here we go again.
The Queens Tourism Council failed because the groups that comprised it have also failed in their missions.
Don't spend my tax money keeping borough hacks like Terri Osborne in their well paying jobs...rehashing ideas that will never work.
Encouraging tourism in Queens is like trying to convince a client in a fine bordello to sleep with the ugliest whore in the house.
Even offering discount rates...
nobody likes what they could get at home (i.e. with their wives) when they're on a spree in "The Big Apple".
Manhattan is the tourist's golden isle...their destination of choice.
Nobody who's sober chooses Queens
(unless they've been hijacked there).
Don't be silly. We are spending $65 million for the Queens Museum so that all the wonderful diversity of Queens can be projected in a professional museum setting.
After all, the Met Museum in Manhattan may have a fine collection of Peruvian artifacts, but no one has a fine collection of Peruvian artifacts by the transgendered who live locally and will give a local hack a photo op.
Do you see the difference?
I could stand my place in a circle-jerkle and produce better results than reactivating the Queens Tourism Council.
Does that dimwit Helen Marshal actually believe in Queens' possibilities....other than selling it off to developers piece by piece?
Don't be silly....
tourists can come to the (very French sounding) "Le Frak" (builder, Sam Lefrack's legacy) performing arts center instead of Lincoln Center.
65 million dollars to line Finkelpearl's and his friends pockets!
Nobody's comin' to the Queens Museum unless they fill school buses with students on field trips.
When I was a kid in the Bronx, our school field trips were to the Met Museum, etc. !
Expose Queens' school children to second rate cultural fare and you'll wind up producing second rate minds.
Oh, but isn't that what machine pols like....a dumb voting public?
If I was the student they need to package Citifield and/or US Tennis Open along with a few top restaurants. That would still be a Hail Mary
Speaking of beautiful movie palaces, the Triboro would have been an attraction I would have flocked to Astoria to see. But the powers that be decided in their infinite wisdom to tear it down in the early 70's and put up those lovely three story apartments. Oh well, there is always the Keith.....
If I was the student they need to package Citifield and/or US Tennis Open along with a few top restaurants. That would still be a Hail Mary
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Maybe, MAYBE citifield. US Open, they would never consider it.
I saw European tourists in downtown Flushing on Sunday. They had a list of places they wanted to visit and were saying how now they don't have to visit Asia.
I also saw two adventurous New England types who were saying they nervous and excited to eat at as many of the food stalls they could before going off to Citifield. I hope they didn't get food poisoning...
Well there you have it. Flushing as a day destination.
Let the tourists flock to Flushing, they will be appalled at the lack of humanity & general uncouth feel of the masses..what a dump its become..it used to be a cute town...oh well..we colonized others, now its our turn to be subjugated!!!
After all, the Met Museum in Manhattan may have a fine collection of Peruvian artifacts, but no one has a fine collection of Peruvian artifacts by the transgendered who live locally and will give a local hack a photo op.
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Yup, that pretty much sums it up. Everyone in the boro is so worn down that they dont realize pols will use any excuse to get votes.
Quality of programming? a backseat to agendas and photo ops. The locals cant tell the differnce or care about the difference, and if they did, they know better to keep their mouth shut and move if they did not buy into the farce that goes for culture in these parts.
Let the tourists come - nobody outside of NYC tourism is working.
Queens is a dump - plain and simple. Who wants to experience the third world? It's dirty and unattractive and overcrowded. No one speaks English. At least people in Europe speak English, so tourists can shop and get around. My advice to travellers is "Stay home." There is nothing to see here but a depressing, dirty, overcrowded stretch of land with rude illegal immigrants who disrespect America and its laws.
Restore the NYS Pavilion towers, and then we can talk about tourism!
I think that Myra Baird Herce and her friends (living & dead) at the Flushing Chamber of Commerce are busy posting about tourists "flocking" to Floo-shing.
That old broad is FOB (full of bullshit).
Mainly on Main Street you can see mostly "coolies" sons and daughters coming in from Connecticut, etc. to visit their relatives who first settled in the downtown dump.
They're second generation yuppies.
Their only impetus for visiting such an overcrowded unsanitary town is to say hello to mom, pop, grandma or grandpa who don't possess the earning power to leave Floo-shing.
Seeing a few Anglo "New Englander" types gawking at the "quaint" sights in Flushing hardly qualifies it as a tourist destination of choice.
The NYC Tourism Bureau's own figures denies the claim that a lot of people visit Flushing....or Queens for that matter.
Out of town Asians might visit Flushing but it's definitely not a mainstream tourist spot.
Nor is Queens except during the U.S. Open or Mets games.
Then the "tourists" (LOL) quickly leave to go back home.
Maybe those European "tourists" you spied in Flushing on Sunday were foreign exchange students doing a study for their sociology classes.
A handful isn't a multitude.
Such Haters!!! Only the other grass seems to be greener to you folks but I drove some tourists around Queens myself and they loved it. There is a lot good stuff to see and experience here in Queens. But the last thing they would want to see are xenophobic Archie Bunkers that can only bitch and moan on there PCs.
This is by far the dumbest comment I have ever read:
"Queens is a dump - plain and simple. Who wants to experience the third world? It's dirty and unattractive and overcrowded."
- Sounds like YOU live in a dump. My neighborhood is not a dump and people take great of there homes. On a per square mile basis, Queens has a lower population density than Manhattan or Brooklyn. And we don't need math to figure that out.
"No one speaks English."
- I mostly know Queens residents and they all speak perfectly good english. You need to get out more.
"At least people in Europe speak English, so tourists can shop and get around."
- People in "European countries" speak a variety of different languages. English is another language taught in most schools. Most people in European countries hate Americans because they think we are obnoxious. They use to love our money, but not anymore.
Don't shit where you sleep folks!
So exactly what is there in Queens that would interest any tourist?
It was hard enough to get them to trek out to Corona to visit the World's Fair in 1964.
Anonymous post# 19 seems to have found something(s) here the rest of us have overlooked. Perhaps you could enlighten us? Prof Giordano could use all the help he can get.
Queens is a dump. I don't know where you live, but I live in Maspeth and what was once a beautiful neighborhood is now filthy and overcrowded. There are some people who take pride in their property, but the majority have moved on to other cheaper states with a better quality of life. Take a ride to Jackson Heights or Corona and see if you can find anyone who speaks English. Good luck with that.
Take a ride to Jackson Heights or Corona and see if you can find anyone who speaks English. Good luck with that.
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They vote Democratic .... when they vote.
So.....whatcha problem?
HA! Isn't that what this supposed Aqueduct Casino supposed to do ?!
You driving a few "tourists" around Queens who "loved" it doesn't account for the numbers that are published by the New York Visitors & Convention Bureau.
Their figures indicate that MOST tourists to the big apple stay within Manhattan where all the great sites are.
THE DO NOT COME TO QUEENS IN ANY SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS!
So why bother beating that old dead horse by promoting Queens tourism?
Oh yes....the likes of Terri Osborne need a job and are qualified for little else but BS!
Machine pols always reward their dedicated suck-ups with lifetime lucrative employment.
And we taxpayers go broke providing for their salaries.
How much did Jeffrey Rosenstock make off of his mediocre Theater In The Dark before his retirement?
Quite a bundle I suspect.
Do we really want tourism in Queens? I'd prefer they stay in Manhattan.
As someone who lives in Queens and hosts out-of-town visitors regularly throughout the year, here's my take.
Your mainstream Statue-of-Liberty and Times Square-gawking tourists won't come to Queens, true. Heck, those people won't even go to Prospect Park, Williamsburg, or other "famous"/"interesting" places in Brooklyn, so it's a moot point getting them here.
As for younger 20-something travelers, they like to see some of the "famous" sights, but also are more interested in having experiences they might not have back home. Like going to unique bars, seeing performances and underground art, eating interesting ethnic food, etc.
These are the types of people who I find always spend some of their trip in Brooklyn, with popular destinations being the Brooklyn Bridge/Brooklyn Heights Promenande/DUMBO, Williamsburg/Greenpoint, and Coney Island as a day or 2 on their trips.
PS1 is actually a next-tier attraction that visitors I know go check out ou their own, without any prodding from me (this can be easily coupled with the iconic view from Gantry Plaza State Park). The Bohemian Hall Beer Garden is another, and I've sent people to Flushing Meadows Corona Park (people find obsolete futurist structure and scupture, deteriorated or not, very interesting, as well as the Panorama and soccer games and food carts). Indian food in Jackson Heights or Asian food in Flushing is usually coupled with such a sojourn.
Silent Barn is exemplary of an underground music venue in Queens that young visitors have fun at, not to mention Polish food in Ridgewood at Krolewskie Jadlo.
So, you're right, your average Midwestern tourist family wants to see what they saw on TV, but the right sort of traveler will certainly venture to Queens, although Brooklyn is certainly a stronger draw for most.
On the other hand "tourism campaigns" are how this type of traveler tends to make decisions, either... they do their own research via websites like Yelp or other sources, and a marketing campaign will be of little use.
My 2 cents.
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