Flight to Toronto and China add by Airline

Torontonians travelling to China will have another flight option starting Nov. 27. On that date, Hainan Airlines will begin non-stop flight from Toronto-Beijing, according to published reports.
Hainan, the fourth-largest airline in China, will fly three days a week from Pearson and plans to open a sales office in Toronto. It may also add Vancouver as a second Canadian destination.
Air Canada announced this week that its August traffic numbers were up 7.2 per cent from 2009 but its domestic numbers were down 0.3 per cent.

WestJet also said it saw a decline in domestic travel despite an 8.2 per cent year-over-year increase in overall traffic for August.Both airlines said they will focus on their international routes, which are the ones Canadians appear to favour at the moment.New York City is on pace to set a record for number of visitors in a year, its tourism office says. City officials said preliminary tourism data show New York is on course to surpass its 2008 record of 47 million visitors and reach 47.5 million this year.That’s also a four per cent increase over 2009, when New York’s tourism numbers slipped for the first time since 2001, to 45.6 million, because of the recession.Tourism is New York City’s fifth-largest industry, contributing about $30 billion U.S. a year in direct spending into the economy.

Officials said the city’s hotel occupancy rate from January through June of this year was 6.8 per cent higher than the same period in 2009. Broadway theatres also sold six million tickets in the first half of the year, an increase of 3.7 per cent.Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a goal of reaching 50 million visitors by 2012.