• by Larissa Faw , November 23, 2018

NYC & Company is refreshing the city's tourism digital outreach with initiatives that include artificial intelligence and a new travel booking component.

The "Famous Original New York City" campaign, developed in-house, suggests ways travelers can curate their own experiences under the tagline: “Welcomes You. Always." 

A new tool will now allow visitors to the travel website NYCgo.com to immediately book (if they’re spontaneous travelers) or bookmark items for later reference, including attractions, museums, restaurants, shopping, tours and editorial packages, as well as specially-designed themed “Secret,” “Classic” and “Glamorous” itineraries.

Users who have favorite items can then build custom profiles, based on personal, saved interests through the AI-informed, travel-planning tool UTrip.

A Facebook and Instagram partnership will reach users who have shown intent to travel via Facebook’s beta “trip consideration” platform with targeted content messaging. 

Digital, in-kind and partner media contribute to an approximate campaign value of $15 million, with promotions running globally across 17 countries through summer 2019.

The campaign’s refreshed website is designed for global use, as the landing page, nycgo.com/famousoriginalnyc. It is accessible in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.

Out-of-home advertisements will appear in New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and San Juan. Internationally, the campaign will appear in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom and first-time markets Colombia, India and Peru.

Additional strategic collaborations have been struck with Aeromexico (Mexico), British Airways (UK), Copa Airlines (Chile), Porter Airlines (Canada), TUI (Germany) and TripAdvisor, with further partnerships to follow, says a campaign spokesperson. 

Last year, New York City’s travel and tourism sector saw a record-breaking year, with 62.8 million visitors, $44 billion in direct visitor spending and $66 billion in total economic impact. The visitor forecast for year-end 2018 is 65.2 million visitors, comprising 51.6 million domestic and 13.5 million international visitors.