“The city of Brooklyn is a wonderful place to be. I promise I will bring my family here for a tour next summer.” - Visitor from Dares Salaam, Tanzania

“Thank you ever so much for being so helpful. It’s great to have an information center that gives so much to tourists.” - Visitor from France

“Great help. I was lost without you! Thank you so much. I love Brooklyn people. Next time I’m bringing my whole family.” - Visitor from Newcastle, Australia

“Made it over the bridge at last. Well worth it!” - Visitor form Kiel, Germany

These are just four of the approximately 50,000 tourists that have come through the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center at Borough Hall since 2004, representing 53 nations and 42 states. Arriving everywhere from New Zealand, Liberia, Dubai, Peru and Fiji to our neighboring boroughs and Long Island—more and more visitors are adding Brooklyn to their travel itineraries.

In 2004, when Borough President Marty Markowitz opened the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center, located on the ground floor of Brooklyn Borough Hall above the Borough Hall subway hub, it was the first visitors center to open outside of Manhattan.  Monday’s event celebrated five years of growth and success in welcoming visitors to Brooklyn and working to enhance the City’s tourism efforts in cooperation with our close partner, NYC & Co.

“I always say Brooklyn is ‘Proud Home to Everyone from Everywhere,’ but we’ve truly taken on a new role—‘Proud Host to Everyone From Everywhere,’ said Borough President Markowitz. “When more visitors come to experience our cultural institutions, treasures like our waterfront and Prospect Park and Coney Island, as well as the boundless character and characters of our many hip and diverse neighborhoods, that means dollars coming into Brooklyn. It’s our job to make sure visitors keep coming, staying in our hotels, dining at our restaurants and falling in love with Brooklyn USA (and if they want to take a day trip into Manhattan, that’s okay!)”

Tourism as Economic Development

The Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center is just one of many tourism platforms managed by the Office of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, often in partnership with the nonprofit Best of Brooklyn. Since 2002, when Harvard professor Michael Porter’s study, “Initiative for a Competitive Brooklyn,” identified tourism as one of the borough’s four major economic growth clusters, BP Markowitz has made tourism an economic development priority—commissioning the blueprint Marketing Brooklyn to Brooklyn and Brooklyn to the World; forming the Brooklyn Tourism Advisory Board to advise and inform the development of the tourism industry in Brooklyn; providing support though capital funding (e.g. Weeksville Heritage Center, BAM, and many other projects); land use and zoning powers (Downtown Brooklyn Plan, Coney Island, etc.); leadership; partnership; and advocacy.

Successes have included the opening and expansion of information services such as the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center, the Summer Brooklyn Tourism Pushcarts program and Brooklyn Tourism Kiosk inside the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, as well as the award-winning visitbrooklyn.org website (which features consumer and trade components, and gets approximately 250,000 visits each year).

“Destination Brooklyn” events include the annual and expanding Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week, the internationally prestigious Brooklyn Book Festival, the new smART Brooklyn Art Gallery Hop and the Shop Brooklyn retail outreach campaign, as well as events like the recent 125th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge, presented in partnership with the Mayor’s office and NYC & Co.

Brooklyn Tourism also represents Brooklyn at tourism trade shows, hosts tourism stakeholder workshops, bids on conferences to promote Brooklyn as a host city, compiles basic borough tourism statistics and works with tourism journalists to offer familiarization tours of Brooklyn. This has resulted in successes such as Brooklyn tours, hotels and attractions being added to eight national and international tour operator sales packages; the acquisition of conferences for groups like WYSTC (World Youth Student Tourism Conference), bringing 800 professional organizers of international student travel to the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge in 2008 for five days; and assisting the Little People of America with plans for a weeklong conference in Brooklyn this summer and staying in multiple hotels in the borough for thousands of room nights.

From 2005-2009, Brooklyn Tourism provided familiarization tours and other assistance for at least 57 articles in national/international magazines and newspapers. The total circulation of these publications was more than 21,000,000. The media value of the coverage was approximately $3 million. The publication of Walking Brooklyn, by Adrienne Onofri, a book of self-guided tours of Brooklyn, was previewed in galleys by Brooklyn Tourism, and Lonely Planet, which named Brooklyn one of the world's “hottest destinations” in 2007, chose it to be one of the first pullout mini guides in its inaugural, international Lonely Planet Magazine in December, 2008, alongside Edinburgh, Scotland and Singapore.

Monday’s luncheon honoring the Visitors Center’s dedicated trained volunteers was followed by a press event announcing some recent successes and new initiatives for 2009:

• Brooklyn Hotels Committee: Leaders of Brooklyn’s hotel community are now working together through the Brooklyn Tourism Hotels Committee to attract conventions and conferences
• Shop Brooklyn “Boutique Fashion Nights”: Brooklyn Tourism is working with the website wunderbloc.com to present Shop Brooklyn Boutique Fashion Nights this summer in various shopping districts across the borough. Fashion boutiques will offer special experiences from trunk shows to refreshments and discounts
• New Brooklyn Passes and Tours: Brooklyn Tourism worked with Smart Destinations and Leisure Pass North America to add Brooklyn locations to their NYC Explorer Pass and New York City Pass products
• Brooklyn Map: Brooklyn Tourism, through a meeting at World Travel Mart, worked with NY Tab on new 50,000 tear-sheet Brooklyn maps printed with top tourist sites for use by concierges and cultural institutions to help visitors get oriented and expand their scope

At Borough Hall Monday afternoon, workshops were held for Brooklyn tourism stakeholders on using social media (such as Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn,Yelp, etc.) to get the word out to press and potential visitors.

The Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center is open five days a week, 10:00am - 6:00pm, and is staffed with trained volunteers. (Open Saturdays 10-3 Memorial Day to Columbus Day).

Timeline of Borough President’s Brooklyn Tourism Initiatives

2002 - 2003

• Brooklyn Borough President Markowitz initiates an 18-month economic development study with the Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation and Harvard Business School’s Michael Porter, the “Initiative for a Competitive Brooklyn.”  The study identifies tourism as one of four major economic growth clusters in Brooklyn with significant potential. Subsequently, the borough president assembles a council of tourism stakeholders to advise and inform the development of the tourism industry in Brooklyn. 

2004

• Best of Brooklyn, Inc. (BoB) becomes the nonprofit partner for tourism with the borough president and commissions
• “Marketing Brooklyn to Brooklyn and Brooklyn to the World: A Strategic Plan and Operational Workbook” by industry professionals Brian Tate and Rosalie Rance
• BoB opens the Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center. Located on the ground floor of Brooklyn Borough Hall, it is the only tourism visitor center outside of Manhattan. It is open five days a week, 10:00am - 6:00pm, and is staffed with full time with trained volunteers
• First tourism center operated by a borough to complement NYC & Co.
• The Brooklyn Tourism Advisory Board is formalized
• Brooklyn Tourism launches a Summer Tourism Pushcart Program, with a corporate grant (JP Morgan Chase); college students serve as Brooklyn tourism guides and take the four pushcarts with information about attractions and discount vouchers into different parts of the borough, including the Brooklyn Bridge, the Coney Island boardwalk, Grand Army Plaza and a roving pushcart that participates in festivals and street fairs
• Dine In Brooklyn, an economic initiative to support Brooklyn restaurants, established with 103 restaurants

 2005

• Brooklyn Tourism, through its partnership with BoB, hires its first full time tourism staffer as it evolves into a destination marketing organization
• Brooklyn Tourism produces its first marketing piece, a glossy, color photo booklet about Brooklyn
• Brooklyn Tourism participates with NYC & Co. in Pow Wow, the international tourism marketing business conference
• The Tourism Center increases operation hours to include Saturdays, from Memorial Day through Columbus Day
• Summer Tourism Pushcart Program continues
• Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week continues with 105 restaurants
• Brooklyn Tourism web site, visitbrooklyn.org, launches

2006

• Brooklyn Cruise Terminal opens with Brooklyn Tourism Kiosk inside the terminal (730,000 visitors since opening)
• Brooklyn Tourism participates in CLIA (Cruise Line Industry Association) Cruise3sixty trade show, to promote pre- and post-cruise experiences in Brooklyn to cruise booking agents
• The Brooklyn photo booklet marketing piece is translated and printed in the six languages of the top feeder markets into NYC; participation in major destination marketing tourism trade conferences: World Travel Mart, JATA and NTA
• In partnership with the Heart of Brooklyn, Brooklyn Tourism creates and produces the Brooklyn Pass, a pilot product which bundles major attractions into a two day pass for consumers
• Brooklyn Tourism launches a new destination Brooklyn event, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and garners critical acclaim and attracts 15,000 attendees in its first year. Plans are for it to grow into a multi-day event, which will stimulate hotels and restaurant business
• Summer Tourism Pushcart Program continues
• BoB creates a fellowship for tourism and the fellow conducts the first study of Brooklyn visitation statistics and stakeholder inventory
• Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week expands to 193 restaurants

2007

• A year of growth and development, the portfolio of Brooklyn Tourism initiatives and participation in trade conferences is maintained. With a limited marketing budget, it works with tourism journalists and travel writers to offer familiarization tours of Brooklyn
• Lonely Planet names Brooklyn one of the world's “hottest destinations”—one of only three US destinations to receive the designation
• With a grant from the State, Brooklyn Tourism upgrades its web site with interactive consumer features and trade pages
• Partner with Zagat to publish Zagat Brooklyn Restaurants 2007
• Brooklyn Tourism takes on a new role and bids on major conferences to promote Brooklyn as a host city
• Brooklyn Tourism attracts WYSTC (World Youth Student Tourism Conference), which brings 800 travel professionals who organize and book student travel in more than 40 countries, and begins planning for the 2008 conference to offer delegates pre- and post-tours, experiences and restaurant discounts
• A second Brooklyn Tourism Fellow works on second study of visitation statistics. According to the first two years of statistics, Brooklyn has achieved visitation growth of more than five percent across the board and ten percent in some sectors
• BoB is awarded a grant to be the official New York State Underground Railroad (UGRR) Information Center for New York City and creates a citywide directory of UGRR sites and a video
• Brooklyn Tourism negotiates an annual retainer with Alon Consulting to provide professional tourism marketing services to the trade
• The first Brooklyn “fam” (familiarization) tour for travel operators and receptives overbooks, and a second bus and guides have to be contracted to accommodate the interest
• Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week continues with 187 restaurants
• Summer Tourism Pushcart Program continues
• Brooklyn Book Festival grows

2008

• The Brooklyn Tourism Advisory Council organizes a Hotels Committee, to better work with established and new hotels as the stakeholders for conference and tourism business
• Brooklyn Tourism launches the smART Brooklyn Art Gallery Hop, which will both support galleries and artists and be developed into a full destination Brooklyn tourism product for the portfolio
• Brooklyn Tourism works through the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office and the Office of the Mayor to present a five day celebration of the Brooklyn Bridge 125th birthday
• visitbrooklyn.org receives the Governor’s State Tourism Award for best tourism web site in New York. A press button is added to the site to feature all of the national and international press Brooklyn Tourism has attracted for Brooklyn
• Brooklyn Tourism joins Food Network as a sponsor for the NYC Food & Wine Festival Rachael Ray Burger Bash to be presented in Brooklyn
• Partner with Zagat to publish Zagat Brooklyn Restaurants 2008
• Brooklyn tourism fams and works with Little People of America to bring its annual convention (some 3,000 hotel room nights) to Brooklyn in summer 2009
• Summer Tourism Pushcart Program continues
• Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week continues with 195 restaurants
• Brooklyn Book Festival expands into an international literary gathering

2009

• Brooklyn Tourism Visitors Center celebrates its 5th birthday
• Tourism Advisory Council and Hotel Committee continue to meet
• Brooklyn Tourism works with NYC Road Runners Club in bringing Half-Marathon to Coney Island on May 30, and helped set up run from Prospect Park to Coney Island. Working with restaurants in Park Slope and Coney Island to do a “carb-up” offering for runners, and Coney Island will give discounts to more than 6,000 participating runners
• Attracts NY Tab to print 50,000 Brooklyn tear-off maps for hotel concierges highlighting cultural institutions
• Working with tourism groups to get Brooklyn included in “pass books.” Smart Destinations adds Brooklyn locations to its NYC Explorer Pass for the first time. Leisure Pass - New York City Pass features a 12-page section on Brooklyn
• Hosting Brooklyn familiarization tours for Scandinavian, Brazilian, UK and Russian journalists from high-end magazines with NY State Tourism and NYC & Co. foreign offices
• Dine In Brooklyn Restaurant Week grows to a record 227 restaurants
• Summer Tourism Pushcart Program to continue