Avilés asks about NYC Tourism budget and staffing
Avilés asks for NYC Tourism's current budget and staff size. Mamana says the budget is $23 million with about 100 staff, and that media spending is often what gets sacrificed.
I want to, both of us, Councilman Raglias.
Oh, yeah, thank you.
Could you tell me what the budget of New York City Tourism is at this point?
Currently, it's $23 million.
And how many staff are part of them?
About 100.
We do virtually everything internally, from the development of our content, maintenance of our website.
It just is a better system.
It's more efficient, and it's more cost-effective.
So a lot of our sales team out in the field, bringing in the meetings and events and working with the travel trade, we're deployed.
It is very people heavy, but that's typically what's required.
So what gets sacrificed is usually the money that we spend on media.
So we rely on partners to help us do that when we go out into international markets, again, like airlines and tour operators.
So we're very scrappy.
We do punch above our weight, but we need awareness.
And that typically takes more funding.
So, again, very scalable.
We feel we're successful here.
That success only increases with more investment.
Got it.
Thank you.