Mayor Adams celebrates tourism (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

The COVID-19 pandemic torpedoed what had been record tourism to New York City, but the last year has seen a climb back toward pre-pandemic numbers. Reporting by NYC & Company, the city’s official marketing and tourism partner, projected that by the end of 2022, 56.7 million visitors will have come to the city, about 85% of the 66.6 million that visited in 2019.

Experts say that the goal is to get back to pre-pandemic numbers, and the same...

When can event spaces come back in New York City? (photo: VERSA)

The future is coming into focus. New York City is starting to reopen, and officials are releasing specific guidelines on how different industries can get back up and running, such as regulations for outdoor dining. Empty middle seats and temperature checks are clearly in the future for airlines. 

But what about the events industry, which brings in $10 billion and employs approximately 500,000 in the State of New York? As CEO of the Backal Hospitality Group, I’ve seen first-hand how the events

Restaurants are struggling to survive during the lockdown (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayor's Office)

As New York City’s mom-and-pop restaurants struggle to survive in lockdown conditions owing to the coronavirus pandemic, the New York City Council appears poised to help them cut costs by passing a bill to cap fees charged by third-party delivery services, which have proliferated in recent years via phone apps.

Small restaurants that cannot afford delivery workers or have recognized the popularity of the apps rely on the third-party services like Grubhub, Seamless (which

photo: Sofie Hecht/Gotham Gazette

If you are to tell a lie, make it a big one and repeat it often, is a mantra of many an absolutist regime. Alas, that applies all too often to many businesses. Few epitomize that dictum better than the illegal hotel rental platform Airbnb.

That certainly was the conclusion of a recent, well-researched editorial in the San Francisco Public Press, an independent non-profit focused on