I wonder if I’d be able to access data for exactly how many people in a given week come to New York for work. And then after I look at the data for that, I’d really like to understand of the number of people who travel to New York for work whether that travel was actually necessary for real business purposes, or if it was justified as fluffy internal meetings or accompanying supposed direct reports on their customer meetings. Regardless, New York is a hot place to visit, and it’s an even hotter place to visit when you’re not traveling on your own dime.

I cannot even count the number of “fluffy” BS visits I’ve heard of at companies where I’ve worked when people just wanted an excuse to travel to New York, so they made them up. The most recent one was for a supposed “internal” training that would have lasted an hour… and could easily have been done over a video and screen-share meeting.

So oftentimes now, when I hear that someone is coming to New York for “business” purposes, I usually just chuckle to myself and think, “Sureeeee they are.”