Hotel boom in the Big Apple
New York City will reach a record 90,000 hotel rooms by year’s end, representing a 24 percent increase since 2006, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said.
More than 7,000 rooms are in the pipeline that will add to the City’s hotel inventory, with an average 40 percent of new openings taking place in boroughs other than Manhattan, including in Long Island City and Queens, a hotbed of hotel development.
Last year, New York City welcomed a record 48.8 million visitors and the city is on track to reach a record number of visitors this year. Room rates are steadily increasing, and occupancy remained at close to 85 percent, the highest in the nation.
“That’s good news not just for tourists, but also for the city’s economy. Our tourism sector employs 323,000 people, and those jobs are now increasingly located outside Manhattan, as tourists want to visit all of the city’s great neighborhoods,” Mayor Bloomberg said.
There are now 17 hotels in Long Island City that are comprised of 1,500 rooms. Major hotel brands in the neighborhood include the Four Points by Sheraton, Fairfield Inn, Country Inn & Suites, Holiday Inn and opening next month, the Wyndham Garden Long Island City.
Independent properties such as the Z NYC join other LIC hotels such as the Ravel, the Queensboro Hotel and the Verve Hotel, among others.
The Z NYC Hotel, where the announcement was made, is an example of the new accommodation in the city. A redesigned warehouse property, the Z NYC was transformed to offer 100 rooms as well as Z Roof and Z Lounge bars serving signature Z cocktails.
“Long Island City is a great neighborhood with great energy, which I wanted to showcase in the Z Hotel,” Z NYC owner, Henry Zilberman said.
“Long Island City’s popularity is rising because it’s an incredibly cool place and it gets cooler every day. It’s close to shopping in Manhattan, its’ affordable, quiet, safe,” he said.
“Long Island City is fast becoming a popular neighborhood for leisure and business travelers alike—with its wide range of affordable hotel options, great cultural attractions, thriving restaurant scene, and seamless public transportation to midtown, visitors are finding it to be an ideal NYC destination. It’s just one example of how the City continually evolves and reinvents itself,” NYC & Company’s CEO George Fertitta said.
Popular attractions in Long Island City include MoMA PS1; the Sculpture Center; Noguchi Museum, Fisher Landau Center for Art and the nearby recently renovated Museum of the Moving Image. Long Island City and nearby Astoria are also hubs for New York City’s television and film production—two of the largest studios outside Hollywood, Silvercup Studios and Kaufman Astoria Studios, are close by.
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