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Syracuse Businesses Welcome Back International Tourists Syracuse Businesses Welcome Back International Tourists

By Charles Marshall

CHARLIE MARSHALL: Stores at Destiny USA will welcome international tourists with open arms today. Director of Marketing at Destiny, Nikita Jankowski, says Canadian travellers alone account for 20 percent of the mall’s business.

NIKITA JANKOWSKI: We’re thrilled to have the Canadian border reopen, just because, you know, Canadians make up about 20 percent or more of our shoppers here, and like, it’s been too long, so we’re really looking forward to our Canadian guests to return here.

MARSHALL: Destiny USA will not only benefit from Canadian visitors from coming to their in-mall attractions, but also from guests staying at their hotel across the street. Jankowski says Embassy Suites by Hilton Destiny USA was built to attract Canadians looking to stay for the weekend.

JANKOWSKI: In the past, Canadians would typically spend a day or so here at Destiny, which is one of the reasons why we built the hotel and property in the first place is because they would stay Friday, Saturday, and they would stay in other hotels in the area so we were like: ‘why don’t we have a hotel right here for them so they can stay right here on property.

MARSHALL: Just ten minutes up the road from Destiny USA: the Erie Canal Museum. Executive Director of the museum, Natalie Stetson, says they’re looking forward to the border re-opening today, because international visitors account for about 6 percent of their visitors — and it’s not just people from Canada.

NATALIE STETSON: We see quite a few Canadian visitors that come through, but those aren’t our only international visitors. We see people from all over the country, usually all six continents, excepting Antarctica, of course we, I don’t know that we’ve ever had an antarctic visitor, but most of the other continents we see represented in a typical year and we hope to be able to welcome those visitors back.

MARSHALL: Both Stetson and Jankowski hope the border reopenning is just another step in the country’s slow return to business as usual. Reporting in Syracuse, I’m Charlie Marshall, NCC News.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) —  On Monday, the United States opened the international border for the first time since March 2020. Both Destiny USA and the Erie Canal Museum have relied on international tourism in the past, and welcome international tourism’s return today.

Nikita Jankowski, the Director of Marketing at Destiny USA, said that in a typical year, Destiny would rely on Canadian tourists for at least 20% of the mall’s business. Jankowski said today they will begin rolling out deals for Canadian travellers.

“We have tenants that are offering deals, we have tenants that are offering packages for [Canadian travellers],” Jankowski said. “Especially our hotel and property, the Embassy Suites by Hilton at Destiny USA, they’re offering 20% off for rooms for Canadians that show proof of residency.”

Executive Director of the Erie Canal Museum, Natalie Stetson, said the museum also relies on international travellers, but for just 6% of their attendance.

“We’re really glad that international tourism can return here to the Erie Canal Museum,” Stetson said. “In a typical year, which — maybe we’ll see one of those sometime in the future — we had about 23,000 visitors that would come by and visit us, of those about six percent of them were international.”

Stetson said this time of year is typically when more local visitors come to the museum and she expects the tourism influx to begin in full during the spring, but she welcomes an early start to the tourism season.

“Maybe we’ll see more tourists, more international visitors this winter,” Stetson said. “Because they haven’t been able to come, maybe they’ll be chomping at the bit to come.”

While COVID-19 was disastrous for many businesses across the country, Jankowski said Destiny USA still has new stores cropping up across the mall.

“It’s a new normal, but we have a lot of great things that they’ll notice here,” Jankowski said. “We have new stores that have opened, we have new attractions, venues, things like that — we’re opening up our doors to the Canadians, but we’re also opening with new opportunities, as well.”

Stetson said she hopes this is the first step to a more normal, post-COVID-19 world, but for now, the museum has had to cut out some of their exhibits.

“Yeah, I hope so,” Stetson said. “I don’t know what things are going to look like on the other side of this. We still have a few of our exhibits here that we haven’t opened back up — we have phones that you listen to, and those are just a little too close to the head. Most of our exhibits we have opened back up,  touch screens and things like that, now that we know a little bit about how the virus works.”

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