Sadiq meets ‘good friend’ Bloomberg in NYC as he launches £10m campaign to lure tourists to London
Sadiq Khan arrives in Big Apple as US tour begins: London Mayor meets ‘good friend’ Michael Bloomberg in New York as he launches £10m campaign to lure US tourists and business to UK capital
The London mayor began his five-day tour yesterday in a bid to promote London’s ailing tourism sector He met with former NYC mayor and media mogul Michael Bloomberg yesterday – calling him a ‘good friend’Khan has said he also hopes to use the trip, which will also include visits to California, to attract investment to the capital after London’s tourism industry lost £7.4billion in revenue in 2020 due to Covid-19 pandemic
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London mayor Sadiq Khan has met with former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg as he began a tour of the US meant to promote London’s ailing post-pandemic tourism industry – which lost £7.4billion in 2020 alone.
The Labour mayor who will launch a new £10 million tourism campaign in a bid to atttact US tourists back to the UK capital after Covid used his Twitter account to post a picture of him crossing a New York street with the iconic Chrysler building in the background.
The image was accompanied with a picture of Khan and Bloomberg – who was NYC mayor from 2002 to 2013 – in a coffee house catching up.
Khan used his Twitter account to post a picture of him crossing a road with the iconic Chrysler building in the background
He also posted a picture of him meeting his ‘good friend’ and former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg in a coffee house
The meeting was part of the first day of a 5 day visit to the US in a bid to boost London’s tourism industry after Covid
Khan spoke of the affection between the mayors and called the media mogul billionaire a ‘good friend’.
The Mayor of London has said he hopes to use the trip, which will also include visits to California, to attract investment to the capital.
He will also discuss pandemic recovery with senior politicians.
London was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, losing £7.4 billion of international tourist spend in 2020 alone.
Khan will launch his marketing campaign in New York today, alongside mayor Eric Adams.
He will then meet representatives from Google and LinkedIn in San Francisco, before travelling to Los Angeles to promote London’s film industry.
Khan said he intends to use the trip to ‘bang the drum for London’.
‘We’re doing four regions in four days, New York, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles,’ he said.
‘It’s really important that I bang the drum for London, that’s what I intend to do.’
The senior Labour figure and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 seemed in good spirits
After meeting the former mayor, Khan will meet current NYC mayor Eric Adams in the city later today
The pictures come as part of a £10million PR blitz by the Mayor to promote London’s economic interests abroad
The move comes a day after Sadiq Khan wrote a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, published in the Independent, to renew his campaign for rent controls in the capital.
In the letter, Khan implores his predecessor to implement a two-year rent freeze for residents in the capital.
Renting in the capital has continued to become more expensive with many London properties now as expensive as New York City to rent.
New York City already has a form of rent control with caps on rent for a small number of buildings supplemented by a larger number of apartments which are only allowed to increase by a small amount each year – known as rent stabilization.
