A New York City Tourism Guide From a Local Perspective:
Overview: For as long as I can remember, New York City has always felt like home for me. Whether it is walking down the street or riding the subway, there is some magic that I feel exists within the five boroughs. As I prepare to leave this beautiful city I want to share my love and knowledge with those who visit. Whenever I visit another city, I often find myself persuaded into going to tourist traps that don’t really help me get to know what the actual city is like. That is why I have decided to create a tourism guide from a local perspective about New York City. To accomplish creating this tool, I will visit various tourist attractions around the city and explore the local spots surrounding them. Along with visiting the popular spots, I will also visit the not-as-popular locations outside of Manhattan because I feel that those don’t get as much attention as they should. Not only will I be creating a tourism guide, but I will also be examining the marketing behind each given tourist spot. I did an honors project about the marketing problem with Major League Baseball, so marketing is something that interests me. The price, product, place, and promotion all factor into how well a business will do. I am intrigued to examine how the marketing of a certain tourist spot factors into the number of visitors each year and the effects on the local businesses surrounding them. After finding all of this information I will compile it into two separate locations. One will be the exact list of places around the city that I would recommend and the other will be the marketing behind each recommendation. This project fills the experiential bucket aswell as the academic bucket.
Measure of Success: By the end of trimester three and when my project will be completed, I hope to create a tool worthy of those who will visit NYC. I hope the experiences that I have visiting the various locations help me learn more about the city as well as the people. My project will only be a success if it is complete to the fullest extent in terms of detail and creativity.