Just like there are enough food events to fill an entire website (ahem), there are enough makers in Brooklyn offering tours and tastings that it seems impossible to keep up. There comes a tipping point with a thriving food scene when it becomes too large, fast and varied to monitor, making it too difficult for locals to keep up with and impossible for tourists to digest.
A new website from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce is taking on that qualm.
Even for Brooklynites, taking advantage of all that’s on offer is a challenge, said Carlo Scissura, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s amazing that people still don’t know how much is really happening in Brooklyn. There are still Brooklynites who haven’t visited other neighborhoods [than the one where they live],” Scissura said.
One of the main features of the site is a map intended for a self-guided wine tour. Brooklyn Winery, Brooklyn Oenology, Rooftop Reds, The Red Hook Winery, are all including in a downloadable “Wine Trail Tasting Tour” map, which the chamber hopes will give some direction to the thousands of locals and visitors who might be easily overwhelmed by all the borough has to offer.
“We are hearing from tourists that they really want to have organized things. Not necessarily organized tours, but they want to be able to get a tour of the winery,” Scissura said. The chamber has encouraged facilities to make their establishments tourable and open to the public to create a more personal experience and continue to expand the perception of Brooklyn as a “tourist destination.”
According to Airbnb, a major sponsor of the site, one third of its visitors to New York stay in Brooklyn. And since Airbnb hosts are flung far and wide, both Airbnb and the Chamber have an interest in helping tourists take advantage of every corner of Brooklyn.
“The more we can help our hosts connect with the local business community, the better experiences and insights they can provide their guests,” Molly Turner, global head of civic partnerships at the company said in a statement.
Scissura says that the most common visitors to the site are coming from India, Israel and the United Kingdom.
