Greeters are volunteers who welcome tourists in their city or region, and show them around for free as they would do with friends or family. It is a form of social tourism; the residents participate in the activities of the tourists, and tourists get to see the local life of the place visited. During a walk through the city, a Greeter will not only point out interesting or unknown places, but also talk about daily life in the city and listen to what the guests have to say about their hometown.
The term "greeter" may also refer to a person whose job is to greet customers entering a store, such as a Walmart greeter. Some other institutions have greeters, such as universities, although the title is not consistent.
The first Greeter initiative was New York's Big Apple Greeters, founded by Lynn Brooks in 1992. [1] It was hoped that the program, sponsored by Manhattan borough president Ruth Messinger, would improve New York's reputation as a "dangerous, expensive and overwhelming" place by letting tourists see it through the eyes of its residents. [2] This idea soon spread to a variety of tourist destinations across the world.
There are currently two Greeter websites: internationalgreeter.org (formerly globalgreeternetwork.com) is operated by the International Greeter Association, established in May 2019.
"The Big Apple" is a nickname for New York City. It was first popularized in the 1920s by John J. Fitz Gerald, a sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph. Its popularity since the 1970s is due in part to a promotional campaign by the New York tourist authorities.
Tourism is travel for pleasure, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. UN Tourism defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes". Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments.
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment hub, and neighborhood in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, New York, U.S. It is formed by the junction of Broadway, Seventh Avenue, and 42nd Street. Together with adjacent Duffy Square, Times Square is a bowtie-shaped plaza five blocks long between 42nd and 47th Streets.
The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, shortened to EPCOT or E.P.C.O.T., was an unfinished concept for a planned community, intended to sit on a swath of undeveloped land near Orlando, Florida. It was created by Walt Disney in collaboration with the designers at Walt Disney Imagineering in the 1960s. Based on ideas stemming from modernism and futurism, and inspired by architectural literature about city planning, Disney intended EPCOT to be a utopian autocratic company town. One of the primary stated aims of EPCOT was to replace urban sprawl as the organizing force of community planning in the United States in the 1960s. Disney intended EPCOT to be a real city, and it was planned to feature commercial, residential, industrial, and recreational centers, connected by a mass multimodal transportation system, that would, he said, "Never cease to be a living blueprint of the future".
A museum ship, also called a memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public for educational or memorial purposes. Some are also used for training and recruitment purposes, mostly for the small number of museum ships that are still operational and thus capable of regular movement.
Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performance is practiced all over the world and dates back to antiquity. People engaging in this practice are called street performers or buskers. Outside of New York, buskers is not a term generally used in American English.
In the United States, tourism is a large industry that serves millions of international and domestic tourists yearly. Foreigners visit the U.S. to see natural wonders, cities, historic landmarks, and entertainment venues. Americans seek similar attractions, as well as recreation and vacation areas.
The Fête de la Musique, also known in English as Music Day, Make Music Day, or World Music Day, is an annual music celebration that takes place on 21 June. On Music Day, citizens and residents are urged to play music outside in their neighborhoods or in public spaces and parks. Free concerts are also organized, where musicians play for fun and not for payment.
Washington Square Park is a 9.75-acre (3.95 ha) public park in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. One of the best known of New York City's public parks, it is an icon as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity. It is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Broad Channel is a neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Queens. It occupies the southern portion of Rulers Bar Hassock, the only inhabited island in Jamaica Bay.
Slab City, also called The Slabs, is an unincorporated, off-the-grid alternative lifestyle community consisting largely of snowbirds in the Salton Trough area of the Sonoran Desert, in Imperial County, California. It took its name from concrete slabs that remained after the World War II Marine Corps Camp Dunlap training camp was torn down. Slab City is known for attracting people who want to live outside mainstream society.
Alan Seeger was an American war poet who fought and died in World War I during the Battle of the Somme, serving in the French Foreign Legion. Seeger was the brother of Elizabeth Seeger, a children's author and educator, and Charles Seeger, a noted American pacifist and musicologist; he was also the uncle of folk musicians Pete Seeger, Peggy Seeger, and Mike Seeger. He is lauded for the poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Death", a favorite of President John F. Kennedy. A statue representing him is on the monument in the Place des États-Unis, Paris, honoring those American citizens who volunteered to fight for the Third French Republic while their country was still neutral and lost their lives during the war. Seeger is sometimes called the "American Rupert Brooke".
Faʻaʻā is a commune in the suburbs of Papeʻete in French Polynesia, an overseas country of France in the Pacific Ocean. Faʻaʻā is located on the island of Tahiti, in the administrative subdivision of the Windward Islands, themselves part of the Society Islands. At the 2022 census Faʻaʻā had a population of 29,826, making it the most populous commune on Tahiti and in French Polynesia. Faʻaʻā has many mountains inland that can reach 1,500 m (5,000 ft). Mount Marau is an extinct volcano in the inland limits and can be seen from nearby Moʻorea. The area of Faʻaʻā is 9 m (30 ft) above mean sea level on average.
New York City received a ninth consecutive annual record of approximately 65.2 million tourists in 2018, the busiest tourist city attraction, and one of the world's overall busiest tourist attractions, counting not just overnight visitors but anyone visiting for the day from over 50 miles away, including commuters. Overall the city welcomed 37.9 million visitors who stayed overnight in 2018, of whom 13.6 million were international. Major destinations include the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, Broadway theatre productions, Central Park, Times Square, Coney Island, the Financial District, museums, and sports stadiums. Other major visitor activities include luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; entertainment events such as the Tribeca Film Festival; Randalls Island music festivals such as Governors Ball, Panorama and Electric Zoo; and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage and Delacorte Theater. Many New York City ethnic enclaves, such as Jackson Heights, Flushing, and Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for first and second generation Americans.
Salaam Baalak Trust (SBT) is an Indian non-profit and non-governmental organization which provides support for street and working children in the Delhi-NCR. It was established in 1988 with the proceeds from the film Salaam Bombay! directed by Mira Nair, which was about the lives and vulnerabilities of street children. The name Salaam Baalak Trust translates literally as "salute the child". Programs at SBT include repatriation, providing education, basic literacy and schooling, full care facilities for the young, drop-in shelters for older children, physical and mental health care, life-skills education, vocational training, sports, job placement and counselling in HIV/AIDS.
Slum tourism, poverty tourism, ghetto tourism or trauma tourism is a type of tourism that involves visiting impoverished areas, or in some cases, areas that were affected by disasters, such as nuclear fallout zones like Chernobyl or Fukushima. Originally focused on the slums and ghettos of London and Manhattan in the 19th century, slum tourism is now prominent in South Africa, India, Brazil, Kenya, Philippines and the United States.
Time's Up! Environmental Organization was founded in 1987 to help educate New Yorkers about environmental awareness. One of its main focuses is to promote non-polluting transportation, by advocating bicycling.
Responsible Travel is an activist travel company offering over 6,000 responsible holidays from 400 holiday providers around the world. In 2023 annual sales were over £20m and the company celebrated its 200,000th customer. It is one of the world’s largest green travel companies. It is also a travel publisher and has published over 700 destination guides as of March 2024.
A comic book convention or comic con is a fan convention with a primary focus on comic books and comic book culture, in which comic book fans gather to meet creators, experts, and each other. Commonly, comic conventions are multi-day events hosted at convention centers, hotels, or college campuses. They feature a wide variety of activities and panels, with a larger number of attendees participating in cosplay than most other types of fan conventions. Comic book conventions are also used as a vehicle for industry, in which publishers, distributors, and retailers represent their comic-related releases. Comic book conventions may be considered derivatives of science-fiction conventions, which began in the late 1930s.
The Calgary White Hat is a white felt cowboy hat which is the symbol of both the Calgary Stampede annual rodeo and the city of Calgary. Created by Morris Shumiatcher, owner of Smithbilt Hat Company, it was worn for the first time at the 1946 Stampede. In the early 1950s, Mayor of Calgary Donald Hugh Mackay began presenting the white hat to visiting dignitaries, a tradition that the mayor's office continues to this day. Thousands of tourists and groups also participate in "white hatting ceremonies" conducted by Tourism Calgary and by volunteer greeters at the Calgary International Airport. In 1983, the Calgary White Hat was incorporated into the design of the flag of Calgary.