Will New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani ruin your next trip to the Big Apple?

When I checked into my Manhattan hotel on election day, both front desk staff were wearing them: those jubilant red and blue “I voted” stickers.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t give much clue to how they actually voted (given the stickers are handed out by impartial polling station staff), but it didn’t take long to suss out the answer: Zohran Mamdani.

Quelle surprise, perhaps. Not only did the self-avowed socialist romp home in the recent New York City mayoral election, with more than 50 per cent of the vote, but all signs point towards him doing even better among younger and lower-waged voters.

Mamdani’s Corbyn-esque rise to become the mayor-elect of America’s biggest city may have grabbed the headlines worldwide. But given the whole thing happened while I was holidaying in the Big Apple, I couldn’t help but ask a more selfish question: what might it mean for our future holidays to New York?

First, a sprinkling of good news. Unlike other mayors around the world, Mamdani (who will take office in January) has at least said that he does want more tourism. That might not sound like much, but it does distinguish him from some other radical politicians – like Barcelona’s former mayor, for example – who have openly embraced the whole “anti-tourism” movement.

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In all likelihood, though, the good news probably ends there. Having spent the last few days in New York surveying everyone from hotel bar staff to tourism experts, the emerging consensus seems to be that, while Mayor Mamdani might not ruin New York tourism, he will certainly make it more expensive.

Take hotel prices, for example. For all Mamdani’s fondness for centrally-imposed price controls, there’s no indication he would ever be arrogant enough to try to set room rates directly. But there’s every chance that his policies will lead to tourists paying more to bed down in the Big Apple.

For a start there’s his headline-grabbing pledge to increase New York City’s minimum wage to $US30 ($46) an hour (up from $US16.50 at present). While the promise may have won plaudits from hard-Left unions and service staff like those at my hotel, most analysts agree it will prove a massive headache for hoteliers, who will have to pass the cost onto customers.

It isn’t like New York hotel prices aren’t expensive enough already. Ever since the great reopening in 2022, the price of getting a hotel room in this city has gone stratospheric – with the average Manhattan rate reaching a record high of more than $US400 per night last year. A five-star property can easily set you back more than $US1000 per night.

The root causes are the same as in London and elsewhere: massive tourism demand and not enough rooms to go around. But it hasn’t helped that Mamdani and his Democrat allies have saddled the tourism sector with some of the most cumbersome regulatory rules in all of North America.

It was Mamdani’s predecessor, the disgraced former Democrat Eric Adams, who oversaw the Safe Hotels Act: a union-backed bill to ban hotels from outsourcing housekeeping jobs and compel them to install panic buttons for staff. Like similar laws in Britain, its provisions might sound sensible to bystanders, but hotel groups have argued it will add massive costs for smaller operators in particular.

As to whether higher prices will mean fewer tourists, the jury is still out. “New York tourism tends to swing affluent, even compared to other US destinations,” says Andrew Marshall, a Manhattan-based British expat and director of PR agency Cognito. In other words, many visitors will just reluctantly stomach the higher prices.

Hotel groups will be busy lobbying in private, he suggests, to moderate some of Mamdani’s more Left-wing suggestions. Though most will be unlikely to be too combative towards the new administration in public – at least until they have something more specific to grumble about.

That isn’t to say some companies haven’t already raised the alarm. During the early stages of the election campaign, Airbnb spent $US5 million on adverts against Mamdani and others, bashing the 34-year-old for his role in reinforcing the city’s notoriously strict rules around short-term holiday lets – a situation often described as the “Airbnb ban”.

As one of New York’s State legislators, Mamdani was famous for his support for Local Law 18: a benign-sounding law that makes it illegal to advertise any kind of residential property on Airbnb unless the owner happens to be living there during the stay.

Supporters of Local Law 18 will argue that it isn’t a total Airbnb ban. And in a way they’re correct: provided your idea of holiday accommodation is renting someone’s spare room, you should be fine. But if you had your heart set on having the place to yourself, it’s tough luck.

According to independent analysts at Airdata, more than 90 per cent of New York Airbnbs have been delisted.

And what of Mamdani’s wider policies? The idea of state-run grocery stores and free bus travel may sound like Corbynism on steroids, but it’s unlikely to affect your next holiday much. What could be more consequential, though, is how the White House might respond to Mayor Mamdani, with Donald Trump already suggesting that he might cut Federal funding to New York and send in the National Guard.

Would a funding pause mean trouble for tourists? The real-life example of the US government shutdown suggests otherwise. Though any aggressive move towards the Mamdani administration from the MAGA-faithful White House could trigger a fresh wave of demonstrations.

The picture with the National Guard is more complex. Trump may have enjoyed threatening Democrat-run cities with supervisory action but, in reality, most deployments have been smaller and much more targeted than his bombastic rhetoric might suggest.

Even if the White House pushed ahead with a larger deployment of troops that might not be a bad thing for tourists, who may even appreciate the larger police presence. When Trump sent the National Guard into Washington DC earlier this summer, for example, there were several reports of tourists posing for photos with troops.

For now, though, all of that feels miles off. Mamdani might be a divisive candidate, but he clearly has the support of a visible contingent of New Yorkers. Neither is it just lower paid hospitality staff who have got the Mamdani bug. The famous British-born restaurateur Keith McNally toasted Mamdani’s win by offering free champagne at his restaurant Balthazar.

No doubt the scenes in these parts of Manhattan would have been different a year ago when Trump stormed to victory. Perhaps some bars and restaurants would have been full of the sort of apocalyptic doomster predictions that have followed Mamdani’s win on Fox News and elsewhere. And yet here we are one year later, and the Big Apple remains the most vibrant city on earth.

No doubt the anti-Mamdani types will have a point when it comes to some of his foolish economic policies. But does anyone really think that even an avowedly socialist candidate could take away the magic of this?

From where I’m standing, it’s hard to see that happening.