Local businesses will be the point of contact and the enforcement of the City's vaccination and negative testing program.
Based on New York City's 'card check' model, restaurants, bars, clubs, venues, all the way up to sports arenas, casinos, horse racing tracks—even the Superdome—will need to see proof of vaccination or a negative test less than 3 days old before allowing a person entrance.
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But the matter has raised the concerns of many in the business community, including Stephen Perry, the CEO of New Orleans & Company.
"Creating public police, where instead of the government being the enforcement agent, you would be designating the single most damaged sector of the New Orleans economy to be the agent of enforcement.
Speaking with Newell Normand, Perry says making businesses turn away customers is only going to punish the struggling businesses and endanger their way of making a living.
Perry takes a long distance view of this kind of scenario playing out: What will an unvaccinated conventioneer do?
"If you come here and you can't eat, what are you supposed to do? Sit in your hotel room and order room service? The net effect of it would be absolutely crushing."
Perry says making the most struggling part of the economy bear the brunt of having to police who can have access to their business is unfair to business.
"If government needs to step in, if we're at that level of crisis, then let government create its enforcement mechanism through its interactions with its populace. But do not put that on the backs of the most damaged small business people and workforce in our city."
Perry wonders how small businesses like bars, restaurants, and music venues will be able to enforce vaccination regulations and still make a living.
"The net impact of this would be devastating. Multiple hundreds of millions of dollars of impact on the tourism economy."