Skift Take
New York City tourism trends are a mirror to what's happening in most other major cities. Foursquare data show that tourists and locals still stick to predictable paths, with tourists gravitating to top attractions around Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Every city is different and tourism has increased to outer boroughs but those probably still aren't top of mind for many travelers.
There is a big push by cities and travel brands to get visitors to live like a local, but in the case of New York City, however, it appears that tourists are still living like tourists.
That's according to data from technology company Foursquare, which tracked the most visited New York City attractions and restaurants by locals and tourists between September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2016 based on users who have checked in via Swarm, as Foursquare’s mobile app users who have location tracking enabled.
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The data doesn't suggest that tourists don't visit neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx but it does show that any attractions or restaurants in those boroughs or areas, if they did make the rankings, were far from the tops of the rankings.
Rockefeller Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum were some of the most visited attractions by tourists during the past year (see charts below). All of the most visited attractions are respected and visited by locals, albeit, locals are only a fraction of total visitors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, had 6.3 million visitors during its fiscal year 2015 that ended June 30, 2015 according to its internal data
