Author
Howard Gensler is a veteran journalist who’s worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, TV Guide and the Philadelphia Inquirer and is a founding editor of bettorsinsider.com.
Europeans Visit Which U.S. States Most Frequently?
Tuesday, May 9 is Europe Day, introduced in 1964 to celebrate “peace and unity in Europe.” On this day across the Atlantic, European Union institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg open their doors to the public so they can see the decision-making process at work – or at least take a nice tour.
At EmpireStakes.com – your source of New York sports betting - we’re more interested in Europeans coming to America, specifically New York, and our research shows that more tourists from nine European countries come to New York over other U.S. destinations.
Methodology for Research
EmpireStakes.com found a list of the 25 most populated European countries to utilize for the research. Using those 25 countries, we searched which state each European country looked at traveling to the most.
Utilizing Google Trends, EmpireStakes.com looked at the search volume over the last 5 years of each European country for the term “Flights To USA” and used the top queries tool to find the state searched most. If a top 25 most-populated European country didn’t provide enough search results, we skipped to the next country until we got the first 25 countries.
Here are our results:
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Most Popular U.S. State to Visit for Europeans
- New York (9 countries): Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Greece, Sweden, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Finland
- California (6): Germany, Italy, Romania, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway
- Florida (3): Czech Republic, Portugal, Austria
- Massachusetts (2 countries): Russia, France
- Illinois (2 countries): Poland, Netherlands
- Colorado (1 country): United Kingdom
- Texas (1 country): Spain
- Georgia (1 country): Belgium
New York is most popular with tourists from Turkey, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Greece, Sweden, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Finland, meaning that the majority of U.S. travelers from those countries visit NYC.
The bulk of European tourists in New York, however, come from the much larger and much closer United Kingdom, about 1.3 million annually, approximately 10% of the city’s pre-Covid international tourism number of around 13 million.
Why New York? Well, it’s not for New York betting apps.
Part of the reason is the touristy stuff, but part of it is also to visit their relatives.
It’s obvious why Ukrainians would want to come to New York now; they’re at war. But the city also has the largest Ukrainian population of any city in the U.S. Around 60,000 Ukrainians congregated in the East Village after World War II, but now the metropolitan area, which includes northern New Jersey, is home to around 275,000 Ukrainians.
Turks also made an influx into New York after World War II, with Queens being a popular place to live, but the hottest Turkish spot, for the 80,000 residents, is over the George Washington Bridge in Paterson, N.J.
When the Greeks started coming to America at the turn of the 20th century, many of them settled in Astoria, Queens. New York is home to the largest Greek population in the U.S.
Although you’re more likely to find Americans of Swedish descent in the upper Midwest, New York is home to more than 100,000 Swedes. Swedes in New York even have their own Facebook page. The Finns first came to America in the 1800s. looking for mostly blue-collar work. In New York they settled in Harlem and Brooklyn’s Sunset Park.
New York also leads the U.S. with the number of Hungarian residents – over 55,000. They don’t call it the melting pot for nothing. Hungarians started coming to New York in the 1870s to earn enough money to return home and buy some land. Many of them stayed. New York’s Hungarian House remains a source of community.
There are around 40,000 Serbs in New York, with the first wave coming in the late 1800s and congregating on the west side of lower midtown Manhattan. These days Serbian neighborhoods can be found in Queens. The Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, located on 26th Street between 5th and 6th avenues in Manhattan, links the new and the old.
The Bulgarian community in New York is relatively small, with less than 5,0000 residents. That is also true of the Kazakhs, although many now come to America to follow in the footsteps of the great, albeit fictional, Kazakh journalist Borat.
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