Last week it was the North Carolinians who named UK visitors as the ones they were targeting.  They were visiting travel agents urging them to push North Carolina with its two direct links to the state (Gatwick-Charlotte and Heathrow to Raleigh-Durham) as the place British visitors should holiday in.

Now New York has followed with a worldwide campaign called “See More, Be More. This is New York City”. Not the snappiest of headlines but it is supposed to “reflect the feeling of personal transformation that lingers long after a trip to NY ends,” according to the creative head of NYC & Company, Willy Wong.  Or to put it another way, good holiday memories. You can expect to see the campaign on posters and in mailings by companies strongly connected to the US like American Express and American Airlines as well as the online sites like Facebook and Twitter. In all the campaign is going to be worth about $30 million, a considerable amount of money in anyone’s language. But then New York claims that tourism brings the city some $28 billion in income!

New York City is America’s most popular travel destination (yes, even more popular than Florida.) and it is estimated that 47.1 million visitors will travel there in 2010. With direct links from not only the London airports but Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester as well as Dublin and Shannon it is probably the most accessible American destination.

CD-Traveller has written about the city quite a few times. The reasons to go there haven’t changed. It mixes a vibrancy that’s hard to explain until you’ve been there with all that a big city has to offer. Washington DC might be the official capital of the USA (New York was as well for 5 years in the 1780’s) but New York is the capital as far as many visitors are concerned. Shops, Museums, Galleries, iconic structures such as the Empire State, the Chrysler and the Statue of Liberty and Central Park are the main draws. But there’s a different life when you get into Brooklyn or the Bronx. It’s one of those places that is helped by careful planning. You won’t be able to see it all in one go and it will help if you list what you want to see and do and then stick to it. New York has been called lots of things: The Big Apple, the City That Never Sleeps but it is also the city that distracts. Sticking to a list might just help you see what you planned to see.