Times Square is a major commercial
intersection and a neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, at the
junction of Broadway (now converted into a pedestrian plaza) and Seventh Avenue
and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Times Square – codified as
"The Crossroads of the World", "The Center of the
Universe", and the "The Great White Way"– is the brightly
illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest
pedestrian intersections, and a major center of the world's entertainment
industry. According to Travel + Leisure magazine's October 2011 survey, Times
Square is the world's most visited tourist attraction, hosting over 39 million
visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square
daily, many of whom are either tourists or people working in the area.
Times Square is the number-one visited place
globally with 360,000 pedestrian visitors a day, amounting to over 131 million
a year. It has a greater
attendance than all of the Disney theme parks worldwide, with 128,794,000 visitors
between March 2012 and February 2013, versus 126,479,000 for Walt Disney World
attractions in 2012.
Just counting
tourists, rather than residents, it is the number two tourist attraction in the
world behind the. This high level of traffic translates into
$4.8 billion in annual retail, entertainment and hotel sales, with 22 cents out of every dollar
spent by visitors in New York City being spent within Times Square.
