Chicago and New York City have added COVID-19 fees and closely monitored guests, but are the new measures helping or hurting tourism?
If you are considering signing up for a new credit card please click here and help support LiveAndLetsFly.com.
If you haven’t followed us on Facebook or Instagram, add us today.
New York City Adds Restaurant Fee Option, Chicago Too
New York City has implemented sanctioned a new COVID-19 fee restaurants can tack on to customer bills to offset their capacity restrictions. I am torn on this. On one hand, the fee is optional so restaurants do not have to adopt it, and many are hurting. Guests want to help so this lets them help without mandating the higher prices.
On the other hand, COVID-19 is no more the guest’s fault than restaurant owners. Tacking on a new fee on top of the same food and reduced service seems like paying more for less. Business owners had support funds available to them while employed consumers did not.
It’s not an issue of wearing a mask, either. Some restaurants are well-intentioned but misfiring on execution. One restaurant in a major hotel chain discontinued bread service due to COVID-19 but would gladly bring out ordered entrees with bread on the plate. Is there a good reason why bread couldn’t be brought out on a plate before the meal too? Of course this is ridiculous, but blaming COVID-19 was just an easy way to shore up cost savings. The same restaurant was happy for patrons to sign a bill with a pen used by other staff members and guests, but a plate of bread is an infection source?
As always, in a capitalist society, if you don’t like a fee the restaurant is tacking on to your ticket – eat somewhere else.
Some Chicago restaurants implemented a similar restaurant fee. While I haven’t seen the same official order from the Windy City, it appears restaurants are applying it themselves.
Assumption of Guilt
New York has been widely criticized and praised for its exclusion of residents or visitors from other states; at one point the list was 68% of states representing half the US population. Chicago has been less publicized with regard to its restriction list, but both the city of Chicago and Cook County list 16 states that are not welcome. Some restaurants as recently as yesterday hadn’t updated their lists, unnecessarily excluding some residents that had been officially cleared by Chicago.
If visitors of those areas are caught out and about in Chicago, the fine is $700/day.
A reader has been COVID-19 tested three times to comply with other travel orders, has antibodies, no current symptoms, and is not from an elevated risk category had to prove several times that they were permitted to visit. It wasn’t just the hotel that wanted the aforementioned reader to demonstrate they weren’t from an excluded state. There was an assumption of guilt and general looks of disdain (in their opinion) from hotel employees to wait staff to city residents.
Though the reader was “masked up” and followed protocols without hesitation they were still assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.
New Visitors, Bad Impressions
The reader shared that they were showing her friend, who had never been to Chicago, around the city. A city in which our reader visited for another purpose just weeks before. More ill-advised policies seemed to greet the pair everywhere they went which included a Chicago food tour purchased from Airbnb.
One spot the pair visited in their own hotel claimed that while they were welcome in the rooftop bar/restaurant, they could not stand to take pictures – at their own table – due to COVID-19 restrictions.
It left an impression on both of them that despite the city allowing and even welcoming visitors (so long as they were not from an excluded area) almost none of the businesses or staff wanted them there. They wondered why they should visit, spend money, pay COVID-19 charges to “help out” struggling business owners when they were clearly unwanted guests.
Conclusion
Everyone is stumbling through this coronavirus crisis and not everyone can execute it well. But cities that re-open before they actually want to deter future business opportunities. Both the reader and their travel companion indicated they may never go back to the Windy City based on their experience. They come from areas that have the same CDC protocols in place. They have been (safely) welcomed elsewhere, Chicago wasn’t so kind. The city seemed more than happy to accept their money, as long as they didn’t come with it.
That’s not how it works, not for them, not for me, and not for many others. If you’re not ready to open – don’t. But if you do open, you have to be open for business.
What do you think? Are New York, Chicago doing right by visitors or wrong? Would you go back to a city that was unkind in the pandemic after it is over?
All restriction will be lifted on Nov 4
Ignorant response – Biden will win but of course he’s powerless for 2.5 months after that.
If scientists don’t recommend lifting restrictions, he sure as hell smartly won’t.
Social distancing has been a big imposition on Biden’s lifestyle, especially his busy hands. He will find a way to roll back the restrictions.
I feel the same way about Hawaii. Those smug islanders just utterly rejected the other 49 states.
And, no one said a word.
I wonder how they would do if they were their own country – like they seem to want to be.
Also, loll @ Joe Chivas response!
I hope Biden looses by double digits everywhere to shut up the lefties (and I’m not voting for Trump either!!).
“And, no one said a word”, i believe this author was crying about it in one of his articles. You know the Constitutional rights battle cry (that somehow went real crickets, nary a peep after NY and other states implemented same 14 day quarantine)
But regardless, if you have negative vibes vs Hawaii… by ALL means please don’t come. Mahalo
@Moe – Not to worry, my tears have dried by now. Thanks for mentioning this post: https://bit.ly/2YGb9vi
All day dude. Peep/crickets still in play.
Starve them out, they will come begging for all of us to come back, since I have been to all 3 places for work not by choice, I’m more interested in other cities to visit for pleasure than these.
Your article is poorly written. You keep referring to an “aforementioned” reader or a “reader” but you never properly introduced them in the first place. I was very confused while reading this regarding wtf was going on. I was in Chicago this summer and had no issues like those you describe.
@Jason – The reader chose to share their experience on the condition of anonymity due to the acrimony surrounding inflated travel concerns. They travelled this weekend and (“aforementioned” three weeks prior.) Perhaps it has changed since earlier in the summer when you were last in the windy city.
I was there in late August about 3 weeks ago. I’m just talking about the style of writing. It was very confusing, it wasnt clear who you were talking about or what, and it was just weird. I get wanting to have anonymity, and it’s good that you respected it, but there are still ways of introducing a person and explaining that a reader wrote in, had these experiences, and this was the result. It was just hard to figure out what was going on.
I agree with you.
I dunno, if you are traveling during a time of a pandemic, global travel restrictions, low occupancy in hotels, planes and restaurants, you are going to encounter things like surcharges, employees trying to enforce the quarantines, and maybe less cheery service than you would get during normal times. Adjust your expectations…
Spot on. And let’s not forget the odds ratio of getting covid-19 is doubled by eating out. Pandemics and restaurants don’t mix well.
And again, the whole “not high risk” argument. Let’s reiterate: no one cares if you do something foolish and you get sick. They worry that you do something foolish and you get others sick also. The quarantine isn’t to protect you. It’s to protect others. It’s the exact same concept applied to the yellow card and the yellow fever vaccine.
I agree. Also sharing an anonymous anecdote of an experience and extrapolating it to the entire industry seems far fetched.
Agreed – a poor premise IMO
These cities are$$$$ enough to visit so XXTRA fees will hopefully keep people and their $$$ away ..then the liberal cities will again raise taxes on their citizens!!!
you may not know this dee/dot – but that’s where people want to live, and where the social services are, ergo taxes are high
How about your [redacted by admin] reader not go on a vacation during a pandemic. That might solve their problem.
I recently flew on an ultra-longhaul flight (US carrier) in business class. The flight had COVID restrictions (barely edible food, no service etc.) which I was expecting and ok with. Very low load. What I didn’t expect was open hostility from the FAs towards all passengers. They just seemed to be angry and unwilling to even do the basics like keeping bathrooms clean. While I sympathize with the situation they are in, that sort of behavior is no way to encourage people to fly.
I’m from Chicago and eat a lot at restaurants and also work at a hotel. Most of the cases you’re talking about stem from differences in culture between where people are from and where they’re visiting. Which is we need national leadership in times of crises but there’s none during this crisis!
I recently went to Denver and saw young crowds wearing a mask and maintaining social distance including outdoors in parks and trails with great use of electronic menus and overall risk avert precautions. However driving through Iowa, St Louis, and Tennessee since Covid started, I can tell you firsthand that these states aren’t nearly taking the crisis as seriously as New York or Chicago or Denver. In fact I got a couple of laughs for wearing a mask outdoors on a crowded trail in Tennessee where people were coming face to face in 2 ft wide paths.
You can call it crowded city problems or whatever you want to diagnose it but the truth is when many people from these not-so-crowded states drive or fly to Chicago, they don’t adhere to hotels lower capacity guidance in elevators for example or spacing between each other when checking in or worst of all not wearing a mask in the hotel’s public areas as if Covid will give them a break for relaxation lol if you do any of these things then you shouldn’t be traveling, otherwise you deserve to be treated badly by staff at hotels and restaurants!
Why not add a resort fee, destination fee, surcharge for health insurance, the whole 9 yards!
What irks me the most is that I doubt this will be temporary. If a restaurant needs to raise prices to remain marginally profitable, so be it. But just change your prices. Don’t add on fees, and the resulting confusion (e.g. should I tip on the fee??). Ridiculous.
It’s inevitable that people will tip less with this charge being added. Regardless of what the “right thing to do” is, people don’t like junk fees, and will take it out on the front line staff. If I worked as a waiter in NY or Chicago, I wouldn’t want to see this charge pop up on my restaurant’s menu.
I would just avoid those places.
Since April due to eating at home more often (still do a lot of curbside food pick up) I’ve lost 15 lbs due to smaller portions. Restaurants give you those huge portions and sides. When I eat similar food at home I’m not eating an 8 oz burger but maybe 4 oz or eating a small turkey sandwich instead of a huge sandwich with tons of mayo and bacon.
Shortly (or maybe now since I don’t weigh myself that often) I may be under 180 which will be nice and close to a normal BMI value.