It’s almost summer, which means vacation travel for most Americans. While a majority of Chicago-area residents also plan to get out of town in the next few months, we have a closer-to-home destination that’s just as fun: sweet home Chicago.
Despite our gripes about the place — taxes and the cost of living are too high, and there’s too much crime and homelessness — we really like what the city has to offer, from its parks and museums to its nightlife and architecture to its downtown vibe and nonstop festivals, based on a new Harris Poll.
Just as many city residents plan on taking advantage of Chicago’s entertainment options, for instance, as traveling outside the area before Labor Day. Furthermore, almost two-thirds say the city’s big summer events, which this year include a return of NASCAR’s Chicago Street Race, are important parts of Chicago culture.
There’s more at issue than civic pride. Tapping their credit cards along the way, tourists sustain businesses, support jobs and generate tax revenue. If Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to provide social services to more people or subsidize a domed stadium for the Chicago Bears, tourism is how he could get at least some of the money.
The city needs the sales push. Chicago was one of only two cities in the world to fall off the top 20 summer destinations for travel this year, based on searches within the U.S. on Google Flights. The other was San Francisco, which rivals Chicago in media depictions of a once-ascendant global city now stuck a doom loop.
Chicago’s tourism industry is still recovering from the shutdown of travel and group gatherings in 2020, when the pandemic hit. Choose Chicago, the largely state-funded agency focused on marketing for meetings, events and leisure travelers, estimates that more than 50 million people visited the city last year, down from roughly 60 million in 2019, the city’s peak year.
But even at their reduced number, those visitors had a big impact. Altogether, according to Choose Chicago extrapolations, they spent an estimated $14 billion in the city, including approximately $1.8 billion in sales, hotel and other taxes. Tourism-related employment totaled about 84,000 in Chicago.
Many locals remain sold on Chicago for a staycation. In the poll, half of city residents and 42% of residents of suburban Cook County say they plan to play tourist in the city sometime this summer. Half of city residents and 59% of suburbanites say they intend to leave town for a summer break.
Topping the list of favorite city attractions for city and suburban folk alike: the lakefront and other parks, museums and downtown amusements such as Navy Pier. Many say they also plan to go to Lollapalooza, Taste of Chicago or other major events.
So how could Chicago truly break out? Making the city safer is Job No. 1. Though violent crime has been declining, as it has been across most of the country, our polling shows that public safety remains the top concern of city residents. And if we’re worried, imagine what outsiders think based on years of headlines calling Chicago the murder capital of the Midwest or even of the entire nation. (FYI, it isn’t on a per-capita basis, which is how statistics like these should be calculated.)
The mayor’s “People’s Plan for Community Safety” aims to get at the root causes of violence by pouring resources into the city’s most desperate neighborhoods, including through guaranteed income for residents. The social service spending may work, but it would take years to find out. Chicago’s tourism sector can’t wait that long.
To assuage out-of-towners in the meantime, the city needs to sell Chicago like never before. Though it’s without a permanent CEO, Choose Chicago is out there hustling. Its marketing team emailed its economic impact data of tourism from Los Angeles, where they were pitching Chicago at a trade show to hundreds of international leisure-travel packagers.
Chicago will be hosting the association’s gathering next year, for the first time since 2014 — which is expected to boost bookings.
Chicago residents believe the efforts pay off. Seven of 10 respondents say the city’s major summer festivals and events boost the city’s reputation as well as the local economy.
In Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s last years in office, she, together with Choose Chicago, brought NASCAR racing to Grant Park in 2023 and earned Chicago the privilege of hosting the Democratic National Convention at the United Center this summer. Both come with risks, but both give the city a chance to showcase itself to people around the world. Many, hopefully, will like what they see on social media and TV enough to visit Chicago themselves.
Let’s see how Johnson and Choose Chicago’s new CEO will top her.
Will Johnson is the Chicago-based CEO of The Harris Poll, one of the world’s leading public-opinion research firms
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