Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson just gave his city the highest hotel tax in the entire country.
Visitors will now pay nearly $60 in taxes on a single night's stay.
Where that money is going will tell you everything you need to know about Brandon Johnson.
Chicago Hits Tourists With the Nation's Highest Hotel Tax
The Chicago City Council voted unanimously to create a Tourism Improvement District and hike the city's hotel tax to 19% – the highest in the country.
The increase applies to downtown hotels with 100 or more rooms, bumping the combined city, county, and state rate from 17.5% to 19%.
On a $300 hotel room, visitors will now pay nearly $60 in taxes and fees alone. That's more than Las Vegas, more than New York, more than Los Angeles – where the comparable rate sits closer to 14%.
The roughly $40 to $50 million in annual revenue flows to Choose Chicago, the city's tourism marketing arm. CEO Kristen Reynolds framed it as a competitive necessity, pointing to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority's $457 million annual operating budget.
"Chicago is a premier city for tourism, business travelers, conventions and large-scale events," Johnson said in a press release after the vote.
That's the pitch. Here's what it leaves out.
The $1 Million Entry Fee for a Democrat Party Convention
One of the first line items on Choose Chicago's spending list is a $1 million bid fee to compete for the 2028 Democratic National Convention.
Chicago hosted the DNC in 2024 – the convention where tear gas and street protests broadcast the city's chaos to a national television audience. Reynolds later acknowledged that in the aftermath, her team spent months doing damage control, personally reassuring convention organizers "worried about their attendees coming" that Chicago was still safe to visit.
Now Johnson wants working-class hotel guests and convention visitors to fund another run at the same event.
The DNC's advisory board has stated it is weighing a "commitment to selecting a city that shares Democratic values" as a factor in its decision. Chicago's visitors – many of them already squeezed by the city's broader fiscal collapse – are being asked to buy their way into that club.
Wealth advisor Ted Jenkin didn't mince words. "Chicago just raised the price of admission and is hoping more people show up," he told the Daily Mail. "It will only make the city less competitive."
Reaction online was swift. "Let's make it more expensive to visit Chicago so we can attract more visitors," one Reddit user wrote. "It's already brutal to get a hotel here – how is this supposed to help tourism?" wrote another.
A Sinking City Reaches for Your Wallet Again
The hotel tax hike doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's the latest levy from a mayor who is running out of other people's money.
Chicago entered 2026 facing a $1.15 billion budget deficit – the largest since the COVID-19 pandemic. Pension obligations alone total nearly $2.85 billion for the year. The city is also carrying roughly $450 million in fresh borrowing to cover firefighter backpay and legal settlements, with bond ratings already near the floor.
Johnson's original plan to close the gap included an $82 million head tax on large employers – a policy so destructive that Chicago tried it from 1973 to 2014, watched companies flee, and eventually scrapped it. The City Council rejected it again. Johnson refused to sign the final budget, though he didn't veto it either.
The Illinois Policy Institute put it plainly: Chicago's budget "remains overly dependent on burdensome taxes that harm economic and job growth, borrowing, and one-time fixes."
That's the environment in which Brandon Johnson is now selling a 19% hotel tax as a tourism strategy.
Every convention organizer, travel planner, and family choosing a vacation destination just got handed a bill for his failures. He raised the price to visit a city he can't manage, then called it an investment. Nashville, Dallas, and Orlando just got a lot more attractive – and Brandon Johnson wrote their sales pitch for them. Send this to anyone still planning a trip to Chicago.
Sources:
- Ashley J. DiMella, "Major city hikes hotel tax to nearly 20% as tourism bosses eye major events," Fox News, March 19, 2026.
- "To pay for tourism boost, Chicago ramps up hotel tax, making it nation's highest," Chicago Sun-Times, March 18, 2026.
- "Chicago City Council Boosts Downtown Hotel Taxes to 19%," WTTW, March 18, 2026.
- "Chicago Faces $1.15B Budget Shortfall in 2026," WTTW, August 29, 2025.
- "Chicago gets $16.6B budget after mayor refuses to veto," Illinois Policy Institute, December 23, 2025.
- Julia Dzurillay, "Failing city mocked for 'bizarre' plan to boost tourism," Daily Mail, March 25, 2026.
