Apr. 26, 2003 - NEW YORK--At noon one day last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was very publicly eating lunch in Chinatown at the same moment that the head of the tourism bureau was treating some upstate high schoolers to a Times Square concert by the cast of the hit show Mamma Mia! 

In both cases, the message was the same: New York City is fun. New York City is safe. New York is inexpensive, or at least less unaffordable. 

Hotel occupancy, Broadway ticket sales, restaurant checks -- all the indicators of an important tourism economy -- were just beginning to stagger back to pre-9/11 levels. Then came a long, brutal winter; a brief Broadway musicians strike; the war in Iraq; and severe acute respiratory syndrome. 

"Our industry is being battered from so many different directions," said Jonathan Tisch, chairman of the Loews Hotel chain; the Travel Industry Round Table; and NYC & Co., the city's tourism agency. 

Crowds are down all over, including the observation deck of the Empire State Building. 

"The winter just killed us," said Lydia Ruth, the building's director of public relations. "Through the end of April, we'll be down 10 percent over last year." 

Wall Street is New York's main economic (and tax) generator, but tourism is second, with an impact estimated by NYC & Co. at up to $25 billion a year. 

Wall Street has been in its own slump for nearly three years, seriously wounding the city's coffers. 

But the mayor can have only a limited impact there. Instead, he and others have strained to get the tourists to return. 

"It's a great time to come to Chinatown," Bloomberg said at the Sweet N' Tart restaurant. "You can get a table, and the food is spectacular." 

The Times Square event was meant to "encourage student travelers to come back to the city," said Cristyne L. Nicholas, president of NYC & Co. 

"There are still some school groups reluctant to come to New York City," she said. Nicholas said the city's visibly heightened security -- including rifle-toting officers at Grand Central Terminal and other high-profile spots -- should allay concerns. 

But it isn't just school tours that have shied away. 

Hotel occupancy for the first quarter was 75 percent, according to PKF consulting, compared with more than 84 percent for 2000. 

Even worse, the average daily rate the hoteliers were able to charge fell from $237 in 2000 to $193. 

"Those are the lowest rates in 10 or 15 years," Tisch said. "Business is quite challenging." 

He said the casualties were spreading through all groups that make a living housing, feeding or entertaining visitors. 

When Midtown Manhattan's established French restaurant Lespinasse -- where meal checks averaged about $100 a head -- announced earlier this month that it was closing for economic reasons, many saw it as symptomatic of the wider downturn. 

The fewer travelers who do come to New York aren't spending as freely as they once did. Tisch said that high-end restaurants are "losing it around the edges," still able to fill tables in prime time, but with more seats empty around 6 p.m. or after 10. 

Particularly missed in New York are the longest-staying, biggest-spending tourists: the foreigners. 

Nicholas said there have been noticeably fewer visitors from Germany and Japan since 9/11. And there has been continued weakness in spending by U.S. business travelers on expense accounts. 

Arrivals at all three local airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- plunged in 2001 and recovered only partially in 2002. 

It is too early to say what impact the war, a soft economy, and SARS have had more recently, Nicholas said. 

So New York has been cultivating more drive-in, regional business, the kind that has long been Philadelphia's bread and butter. 

To entice more of them, NYC & Co. is promoting a summer package of one- to four-night stays including lodging, a Broadway show, and restaurant meals. Prices run from $126 per person per night in June to $116 from July through Labor Day. (Details at 1-800-692-4843 or www.nycvisit.com.) 

Called "Summer Breaks," the packages are similar to NYC & Co. promotions of other years, but Nicholas said the rates were better this year. 

"Price is going to bring [tourists] back," she said. 

She and others say that with the war over and spring finally promising better days, they believe this summer will be better than the last few years'. 

"The first quarter is slower than it should be," said Kathleen Duffy, director of public relations for the city's Marriott hotels. "But for the past two weeks, it has been close to a sell-out. And May looks pretty strong." 

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(c) 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. LTR,