The New York holiday boom is back. Kind of.

People have long traveled from all over the world to experience the glitz and bustle of New York City during the holidays. But over the past three years, that influx of visitors – and their open wallets – has waned thanks to the impact of Covid.

A look around the city at the start of this season, however, showed wonderful signs of life: busy Manhattan streets, a steady stream of shoppers in the stores, impossible-to-get reservations at popular restaurants, full hotels. Things aren’t quite back to pre-pandemic levels yet, but there are plenty of reasons for optimism.

For starters, there are simply more people coming over the bridges and through the tunnels. Foot traffic on Fifth Avenue rose 17.9 percent in November from the year before, according to Placer.ai, which tracks consumer data. That’s a turnaround from this time last year, when the street, which includes Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany and the LEGO Store, saw foot traffic drop compared to 2021.

Locals may complain about it, but New York City’s economy needs those tourists. In 2019, the city had a record 66.6 million visitors, which dropped to just 22.3 million in 2020. This year, however, that number is expected to reach about 60 million, according to New York City Tourism + Conventions, a marketing organization that advertises makes for tourism in the five districts. And hotels are filling up. Preliminary data from November shows that the city’s hotel occupancy rate was 84.2 percent, an increase of 6.2 percent from 2022.

International travelers, who stay longer and spend more, are particularly important and make up about a fifth of total visitors.

At Macy’s in Herald Square — which bills itself as the nation’s largest department store — sales to those foreign tourists fell during Covid, but in the third quarter they started approaching pre-pandemic levels, a representative for the retailer said, driven by a increase in the number of shoppers from Latin and Central America and parts of Europe.

People travel from all over the world to say they bought something in New York’s luxury stores, and those shoppers are back. For retailers, having a store between the corridors of Herald Square, SoHo and Fifth Avenue is an achievement. But retail rents in all the city’s shopping areas are still showing the effects of those weeks and months when shops were dark or closed; they are down more than 15 percent from pre-pandemic levels.

However, some micro-neighborhoods are recovering faster than others. On Fifth Ave, from 42nd to 49th Street, retail rents are rising and availability is lower. But between 49th and 60th streets (where rents are already much, much higher) the opposite is true.

People also come to New York City to eat, at Michelin-starred restaurants, food stalls and hole-in-the-wall places.

This year, diners are up 4 percent from the year before, according to OpenTable, an online reservation service (it’s still down 14 percent from 2019).

The last week of December is one of the busiest weeks for Broadway. The industry has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but attendance is up 2.4 percent this season compared to last, and indications are that this holiday season will be strong.

The show goes on. And holiday visitors, like city residents rushing to holiday parties or returning home from work, become part of the spectacle.

Michael Paulson reporting contributed.