Tourism officials from New York City have held a promotional event in Tokyo aimed at attracting more Japanese travelers to the Big Apple.

Japanese travel agents and media personnel were among the attendees at Friday's event, which featured hip-hop music to mark the 50th anniversary of the genre's birth in New York.

City officials said New York is seeing a major rebound in domestic and international tourism as the world emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.

They also said that the city's airports and tourism infrastructure are being revamped.

The officials predict that the number of Japanese travelers to New York this year will be less than 60 percent of the level in 2019, before the pandemic.

Tiffany Townsend of the New York tourism authority's global communications team said the city wants Japanese travelers to "come and rediscover" or "come for the first time."