I’ve never been to the Big Apple, I’m one of those dead unfortunate people. Maybe now I can though?!
The tourism partnership was announced Thursday 16th January at CULTUREPLEX, symbolising a two-year agreement between the two cities to improve and share tourism marketing working with Virgin Atlantic.
Virgin Atlantic will be increasing flight capacity by 65% on their direct route from Manchester Airport to JKF Airport, making it the largest aircraft on the route. And more importantly, making it even easier to get to NYC baby!!
New York (I’m led to believe) is the land of hopes, dreams, Joey Tribiani, cheesecake and skyscrapers we can only dream about. There’s definitely plenty more where that came from, in fact, enough to make it the culture capital filled with diversity, hubs of arts, sports and media.
Pairing that with Manchester, also a hub of just about everything you could ever need from sport to fashion, to media and arts.
The city-to-city partnership includes the sharing of best practices in tourism marketing and destination management, including strategy around arts and culture, sports, and LGBTQ+ travel. New York City and Manchester will also exchange marketing assets worth $500,000 USD in each destination.
So expect to see plenty more beaut images of NYC that will deffo make you wanna save your pennies and go. And the folks in NYC can expect to see plenty of pictures of our fab city too.
For Manchester, 2020 represents a significant cultural shift for the city with over £200 million of investment bearing fruit with: the opening of a new special exhibition gallery at the Science and Industry Museum; the reopening of Contact and Octagon theatres after significant upgrades; the expansion of iconic music venue Band on the Wall; the rebirth of iconic Wigan Pier; and the phase one opening of Europe’s biggest heritage gardening project, RHS Garden Bridgewater.
Over the pond, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and American Museum of Natural History will both commemorate 150th anniversaries while the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx will debut the first large-scale exhibition of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s engagement with nature, including new works created specifically for the exhibit. The new Apollo Performing Arts Center in Harlem will debut in Autumn, 2020, marking the first physical expansion of the theatre in its 85-year history.
“I’m incredibly proud that Marketing Manchester has secured what is undoubtably a very powerful partnership with NYC & Company. New York City is one of the top tourism destinations in the world and to be able to align ourselves with a city that we have so much in common with – especially in respect to being open, diverse and welcome destinations – is a huge coup and speaks volumes about Manchester’s increasing global profile.” – Marketing Manchester’s Managing Director Sheona Southern
