How ADNY Makes Lower Manhattan a Perfect Place for Tourists

It’s our 30th anniversary, and we’re self-celebrating. Over the next few months, we’ll be rolling out 30 stories about 30 of our biggest accomplishments, including everything from our daily public safety and sanitation work, to our small business outreach, to how we helped the neighborhood navigate challenges and even tragedies. You’ll be able to find these stories on our website, as well as in our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here. 

Perhaps uniquely among business improvement districts, the Alliance has had a thriving and innovative tourism practice for years. We see part of our job as keeping visitors’ attention and their pocketbooks in the area. One of our goals as an organization is to make Lower Manhattan known as a premiere destination far and wide. As the most historic neighborhood in New York City, downtown is full of fascinating museums, landmark buildings, architectural wonders and much more — plus, thanks to an increasingly robust hotel scene, it is now the place to base your stay in the city.  

There are a number of ways the Alliance has supported the tourism industry over the years. We offer a number of free printed maps and guides to the neighborhood, including walking maps, multilingual guides and our Shop Dine Guide, which lists every retailer and community resource in Lower Manhattan. These maps and guides can be ordered or accessed online, or you can stop by one of our visitor information kiosks in Bowling Green Park and the WTC area at Vesey Street and West Broadway, where we stock a wide variety of brochures, pamphlets and maps — all for free! We go through hundreds of thousands of maps every year, and frequently update them with all the latest attractions. 

We also send a liaison to national and international travel shows to provide detailed information on visiting Lower Manhattan to tour operators and group travel planners. Our representatives highlight the latest attractions, distributes thousands of visitor guides and arrange for tours and hotel stays with downtown destinations. The shows we attend each year include the country’s largest tourism trade event IPW, its international counterpart WTM in London and IMEX, where we promote Lower Manhattan to the conveners and hosts of events in order to bring their business downtown. 

In 2010, we began holding roundtable meetings with tourism stakeholders downtown: Marriott Downtown, the then-Millennium Hilton, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street/NYSE, Century 21 and Delmonico’s. In the years since, though, Lower Manhattan’s tourism scene has expanded dramatically. We now have 43 hotels downtown (with more in the pipeline), along with major stakeholders like the Seaport Entertainment Group, Brookfield Place and newcomers like French luxury retailer Printemps, and we hold quarterly Tourism Exchanges where now scores of attendees get updated on the latest happenings, trends and data relevant to  the downtown tourism space.

Over the years, Lower Manhattan has become a true 24/7 “live, work, play” neighborhood — not just for locals, but for visitors too, which means more people base their stay here. To capture the neighborhood’s everchanging energy, the Alliance has created a series of innovative programs.  In early 2020 we launched the “Explorer-in-Chief” contest, seeking a photographer to live downtown rent-free for a summer and work as a travel ambassador in one of the world’s high-profile tourism destinations. Our first Explorer-in-Chief, photographer Josh Katz, moved into Mint House in summer 2021 and captured the neighborhood for three months in its post-Covid recovery.

In 2024, we launched a “Filmmaker-in-Chief” campaign, seeking filmmakers who could make a short film featuring Lower Manhattan; our winners, Andrew and Remy Neymarc, shot the short “Dreamscape” in the fall of 2024.  That same year, we executed an innovative, award winning walking tour incubator program that helped develop five new walking tours that sought to go beyond the typical offerings now on the market. 

And in May 2025, we will host the WITS Travel Creator Summit, bringing over 600 women travel influencers to Lower Manhattan. The event will further cement the neighborhood’s reputation as a top-tier tourism destination. More to come!