JetBlue has announced that starting May 4 all customers will be required to wear a face covering during travel. The policy comes after the airline began requiring all crew members to wear face coverings while working. JetBlue has modeled its policy on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines that indicate all individuals should wear a face covering in public to help slow the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).
“Wearing a face covering isn’t about protecting yourself it’s about protecting those around you”
“Wearing a face covering isn’t about protecting yourself it’s about protecting those around you,” said Joanna Geraghty, president and chief operating officer, JetBlue. “This is the new flying etiquette. Onboard, cabin air is well circulated and cleaned through filters every few minutes but this is a shared space where we have to be considerate of others. We are also asking our customers to follow these CDC guidelines in the airport as well.”
This new policy will require customers to wear a face covering over their nose and mouth throughout their journey, including during check-in, boarding, while in flight and deplaning. Customers will be reminded of this requirement before their flight via email and at the airport by both terminal signage and announcements. Small children who are not able to maintain a face covering are exempt from this requirement.
CDC guidance defines a suitable face covering as an item of cloth that should fit snugly against the side of the face, be secured with ties or ear loops, include multiple layers of fabric and allow for unrestricted breathing. The CDC recommends surgical masks and N-95 respirators be reserved for healthcare workers and other medical first responders.
Maintaining distance onboard whenever possible
Beyond face covering requirements for crew members and customers, since late March, JetBlue has limited the number of seats available for sale on most flights, allowing the airline to provide additional space between individuals who are not traveling together. Before each flight, JetBlue reviews seat assignments to ensure as much personal space as possible. In addition, rows near crew member jump seats have been blocked off to create buffer zones for added crewmember and customer safety.
Safety enhancements throughout the journey
All of JetBlue’s aircraft are equipped with hospital grade high-efficiency air particulate (HEPA) filters. All recirculated air is passed through these HEPA filters before re-entering the cabin and being mixed with fresh air. All of the air in the cabin is, on average, completely changed every three minutes. HEPA filters are capable of removing 99.97 percent of particles, bacteria and viruses. To learn about how air circulates onboard JetBlue’s fleet, view this JetBlue video at https://youtu.be/Q2_C2iN-tEs.
Since the coronavirus began spreading in the United States, JetBlue has increased the rigor of its aircraft cleanings at night and between flights, using disinfectant approved to kill the coronavirus. Cleanings have been focused on the places customers and crew members touch the most, including seat covers, seatbelts, tray tables and armrests. Traditional food and beverage service have been adjusted onboard to limit touchpoints between crewmembers and customers. To learn about all the additional measures JetBlue has implemented visit http://blog.jetblue.com/coronavirus.
About JetBlue Airways
JetBlue is New York's Hometown Airline®, and a leading carrier in Boston, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood, Los Angeles (Long Beach), Orlando, and San Juan. JetBlue carries more than 42 million customers a year to nearly 100 cities in the U.S., Caribbean, and Latin America with an average of more than 1,000 daily flights. For more information please visit jetblue.com.
The data team at InsureMyTrip has launched a COVID-19 dashboard to track the buying behaviors of US-based travelers. The latest data trends are early indicators at how travelers are adjusting:
Americans Are Spending Less On Future Travel
Prior to the pandemic, the average trip cost was around $5,800
Now, the average trip cost is hovering around $3,600
American Will Take Shorter Trips
Prior to the pandemic, the average trip length was around 11 days
Now, the average trip length is down to eight days
Destinations On The Rise
United States
Mexico
Hawaii*
Jamaica
Bahamas
Destinations With Largest Drop
Italy
France
Spain
Canada
The United Kingdom
Methodology: Based on travel insurance purchases made on InsureMyTrip between March 15, 2020 - April 28, 2020 with YOY comparisons.
Hundreds of millions of Americans are currently dreaming of travel from the comfort of their home while observing quarantine and social distancing orders. Hoping that someday soon it will be safe to travel, armchair travelers are looking to inns and B&Bs to jump start their vacations once it's safe to dip their toes into travel once again. A survey of registered bnbfinder.com travelers recently revealed that more than 83-percent of respondents plan to travel again as soon as it is deemed safe. In addition, nearly 70-percent of survey respondents rank B&B lodging as their preferred lodging as soon as they can vacation again, beating out hotels, vacation rentals, and campgrounds by a sizable margin.
Blue Lantern Inn, A Four Sisters Inn located in Dana Point, CA is a member of the bnbfinder Diamond Collection. The bnbfinder Diamond Collection is an exclusive group of professionally inspected and highly rated luxury inns. Each member of the bnbfinder Diamond Collection is required to have passed a professional inspection from a third party industry recognized inspection agency.
Concurrently, innkeepers around the world, accustomed to providing guests with a superior level of high-touch comfort and service, are prepared and poised to provide their guests with a safe and much-needed gateway filled with rest and relaxation. Offering a clean, private and personalized setting once travel resumes, innkeepers are ready for the new normal in travel, filled with personalized service at a safe distance.
Once travel can once again resume, smaller boutique properties such as bed and breakfasts and inns will welcome travelers back with customized, value-filled and romantic settings filled with the hospitality they've missed. Already sticklers for cleanliness and luxury amenities, innkeepers plan to exceed CDC recommended cleaning requirements and prerequisites for food service and social distancing. In the new era of travel, innkeepers have shared with bnbfinder that they will offer touchless check-in and check-out over the phone, breakfast in bed at no additional charge, above-and-beyond cleanliness, and/or private dining options.
For travelers seeking value, inns and B&Bs provide all the extras, often including multi-course breakfasts, free snacks such as home-made cookies, fresh fruit, and in some cases, wine and cheese amenities. Most also provide free parking, free wi-fi, free bottled waters and soft drinks, and no "resort fees", "daily surcharges" or "cleaning fees", making B&Bs and inns an excellent value for travelers.
Best of all, with gas prices the lowest they have been in decades, travelers surveyed have told bnbfinder that off-the-beaten-path and drive-to destinations will top the list once they are able to travel once again. Tens of thousands of B&Bs and inns throughout the country await travelers with a perfect one-tank getaway.
Travelers seeking to vacation beyond the walls of their homes will find thousands of inns and B&Bs at bnbfinder.com Look for special offers and ideal drive-to accommodations throughout North America on bnbfinder.com, offering the most comprehensive list of B&B lodging in one place on the web. As travel resumes, travelers seeking value, bespoke and safe vacation destinations can turn to bnbfinder for ideas.
Cruise lines have started preparations to welcome people back on board by working on a "health framework" to uphold the safety of passengers after the COVID-19 crisis.
Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and its cruise line members are consulting medical experts and health authorities to establish a new foundation for the cruise sector's future operations, according CLIA Managing Director Australasia Joel Katz.
"While cruise operations are suspended, we are using this time to define the new landscape we will work within and make sure we're ready when the time comes to sail again," Katz said. "Many teams of people around the world are working in tandem with experts to ensure we learn as much as possible from these unprecedented events and exceed community expectations in our response."
The maritime policy work underway within CLIA would define the specific screening, cleansing and medical protocols that cruise lines would adopt globally, in addition to those already in place.
While it was too early to discuss specific procedures or the timing, Katz said the industry's priority would be to ensure the safety and security of passengers, crew and the communities that cruise lines visit.
"The challenges before us are great and there is no quick fix, which is why we have embarked on a process that will be extremely thorough and will address the concerns that communities and authorities expect to see us confront,"he said.
Once finalized, the new protocols would provide further opportunity to communicate with industry stakeholders, government and the wider public to provide reassurance on future cruise operations.
"Our thoughts are with all those who have been impacted by COVID-19," Katz said. “The cruise industry is not alone in having to confront this disease, but we will aim to set standards that other sectors may follow when it comes to our response."
The entrance to the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City.Four Seasons Hotel
By Mary Pflum
A hotel stay that doesn't include a breakfast buffet, an in-room minibar and a coffee station would have been inconceivable to many Americans three months ago. But the onset of the coronavirus has prompted a sea change that could alter everything from how guests check in and eat to how rooms are cleaned.
Hotel experts predict that the pandemic will drastically alter hotel stays in coming months, prompting many properties to embrace a host of new practices, up to and including temperature checks upon guests' arrivals.
"Hotels tend to be a reactive business," said Chekitan Dev, a professor of marketing and branding at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. "It's taken COVID-19 for a lot of hotels to take a harder look at safety procedures and to up their game."
Dev points to safety-conscious procedures enacted in recent days at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City as a prime example of the changes that could be coming soon to hotels across the country.
Nurses who conduct temperature checks at the entrance to the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City.Four Seasons Hotel
The Four Seasons' guinea pig journey began last month, when H. Ty Warner, the property's owner, said he would open his hotel's doors to medical professionals working on the COVID-19 battlefront. The announcement set into motion a series of moves that have overhauled the hotel's standard operating procedure.
"We now have almost no touch points in the entire hotel, which is completely against a hotel's nature of being hands-on and kind," Tauscher said. "We used to be known for the human touch — but now we're all about no touch at all."
Check-ins and check-outs are performed virtually, with no human-to-human contact. Elevator rides are limited to one guest per car. Room service has been discontinued, and the hotel's restaurant, bar and complimentary coffee station are closed indefinitely.
The hotel's new dining option: pre-made boxed meals, available in an industrial refrigerator in the lobby.
"I think it's safe to say that breakfast buffets and communal tables and the kinds of things that had been traditions at many hotels are going away, for who knows how long," Tauscher said.
The new procedures at Four Seasons New York were adopted out of the hotel's awareness that many of the medical professionals it is lodging have been exposed to COVID-19. According to Tauscher, 125 guest rooms in the hotel — about half — have been reserved for medical personnel. But many of the hotel's new safety protocols are now being sought by hotels around the world for all guests, not just properties housing medical professionals.
"Here in New York we're leading the charge, but now the phone is ringing off the hook with calls from hotels from all over the place," said Dr. Robert Quigley, senior vice president of International SOS, the group the Four Seasons tapped to make sure its pandemic-era property follows health and safety guidelines as set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Now, more than ever, safety is important to hotels," Quigley said.
The Four Seasons also considerably downsized the contents of guest rooms, so there are fewer opportunities for germs to spread.
"We removed minibars, excess hangers, excess linens," Tauscher said. "We took extra pillows out, so there are four per room, instead of six."
Quigley also oversaw the complex system by which guest rooms are cleaned.
"Currently, there is no in-room housekeeping per se during a guest's stay," Quigley said.
Upon arrival at the Four Seasons, guests are given three bags: one for soiled towels, one for soiled bedding and one for trash. When towels and bedding need to be cleaned and when garbage needs to be removed, guests are asked to place bags near the entrances to their rooms and to contact housekeeping, which picks up the bags without ever fully entering the rooms.
The deep cleaning of the rooms takes place after guests leave.
"The room is left vacant for a full 24 hours after a guest checks out," Quigley said. "Then a cleaning crew comes in with hazmat suits and does a deep cleaning, after which the room is left empty for 24 more hours. Then housekeeping enters to prepare the room for the next guests while wearing appropriate PPE," or personal protective equipment.
The careful cleaning procedures ensure a room remains empty a full two to three days between guests.
The careful cleaning procedures ensure a room remains empty a full two to three days between guests.
Hilton, which recently pledged to provide up to 1 million medical workers with hotel rooms, is requiring that rooms previously occupied by medical workers remain vacant for three days before any cleaning staff enters.
"We want to protect team members," said Phil Cordell, Hilton's global head of new brand development.
Cordell and Tauscher said deep cleaning techniques are specifically designed for rooms in which medical personnel exposed to COVID-19 have stayed — not rooms that were occupied by general guests. Still, all hotel rooms in the age of COVID-19 are likely to undergo more extensive cleaning than in the pre-pandemic era.
Like Four Seasons' Manhattan property, Hilton — which owns 4,900 hotels in the U.S., including Hampton Inn properties and the Waldorf Astoria — is taking new measures to ensure that all of its guests feel safe in the age of the coronavirus.
To minimize human contact, Cordell said, Hilton is encouraging guests to take advantage of its digital key program, which enables guests to check in virtually.
"Once registered, guests have the ability to check in, select their room and use their phone as their room key, without ever having to interact with the front desk," he said.
Cordell said his management teams are working to minimize human contact when it comes to breakfast, which means reinventing crowd-pleasing breakfast buffets.
"We're looking at single-serve options instead of buffets and having a team member serving guests at buffets instead of allowing guests to help themselves," Cordell said.
Only one guest is permitted per elevator car at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City.Four Seasons Hotel
Then there are the hotel gyms.
"In order to keep guests socially distanced, we're looking at offering guests the opportunity to sign up for a specific gym time slot and exploring in-room exercise equipment options," Cordell said.
Perhaps the most telling sign of the times at the Four Seasons are the two nurses who now staff the single entrance to the hotel, armed with thermometers. Everyone who enters has their temperature taken, employees and guests alike. Anyone with a fever is denied entry.
Quigley said that in the short time the nurses have been posted, they have identified "several" guests and employees with fevers.
"The system is working," Quigley said.
While the Four Seasons does not intend the temperature-checking to be permanent, Dev said temperature checks upon arrival may be a part of the new normal at more hotels as business and leisure travel resumes.
Some reservation agents may begin asking guests about their health and travel histories before a room can be booked.
"Temperature checks are already being done at hotels in Asia," he said. "I would not be surprised if it's done at hotels in the U.S. I also expect some U.S. reservation agents may begin asking guests about their health and travel histories before they book rooms."
Dev said he sees a silver lining to the dark cloud COVID-19 has brought to a battered hotel industry, in which many properties have been forced to temporarily close and furlough thousands of employees.
"Hotels have not taken cleanliness seriously enough in the past," he said. "Duvets should always have been washed between guests. Minibars were always sources of germs. Sneeze guards [at breakfast buffets] were always very old-school. These things needed to be changed."
The biggest adjustment to hotel culture in coming months, Tauscher predicted, will be for hotel workers, who are by nature "people pleasers."
Now, he anticipates a hotel experience that's far less hands-on.
"Like in an Apple store, there will be less human interaction. Virtual check-ins. Virtual checkouts. No direct contact. We'll do with technology a lot of things we used to do in person."
Virtual Tour Do you miss strolling through our galleries? We're here to help. Take a tour with us and experience a few of our favorite spaces.
Duchamp Gallery
Medieval Cloister
Brancusi Gallery
Collection Highlight
In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods to give to humanity. In punishment, Zeus ordered him to be forever chained to a rock, where each day an eagle would devour his regenerating liver.
Performances Revisit some of our favorite performances.
Educational Resources Make art come to life for pre-K–12 students.
Yoshitoshi & Comics Watch a conversation on the enduring influence of the artist on contemporary comics. Featuring art and manga historian Ryan Holmberg and narrative artist Ronald Wimberly.
The safety and well-being of our community is the highest priority as we respond to COVID-19. To support the nationwide effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus, all of the museum buildings are temporarily closed to the public until June 30. Any changes and updates will be announced on our website, by email, and through social media.
For more information on the other exhibitions and programs listed here, including generous donors, please visit our website.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom outlined what “the new normal” might look like in his state and others.
Across the country, we still have little idea when closed restaurants may open again—but on the West Coast at least, we’re beginning to get a sense of what eating out at those restaurants will look like when they do. We’ve lived through the ramping up of COVID-19 restrictions, and yesterday, the states of California and Oregon provided insight into their plans for ramping down. No timeline was provided as to when these new guidelines will be instated, but the announcement can be seen as a distant light at the end of the tunnel.
In a press conference, California Gov. Gavin Newsom—describing a comprehensive plan coordinated with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and Washington Governor Jay Inslee—at one point turned specifically to restaurants. “There’s no playbook that someone else has put together. There are examples from around the world. We are incorporating those best practices and those considerations,” he began. “We talk about what the new normal will look like. As I said, normal, it will not be, at least until we have herd immunity, and we have a vaccine because, as someone like yourself that looks forward to going back out and having dinner … you may be having dinner with a waiter wearing gloves, maybe a face mask, a dinner where the menu is disposable, where the tables, half of the tables in that restaurant no longer appear, where your temperature is checked before you walk into the establishment.”
In separate remarks, Brown mentioned other possibilities, as well. “We want to bring together business owners and practitioners with health professionals to discuss how reopening gradually in these sectors [including restaurants] might be accomplished,” she stated. “For example, this might include additional guidelines for reconfiguring the delivery of services with added physical barriers like plexiglass dividers, or requirements for wearing PPE.”
Meanwhile, Newsom stated that other Western state governors “are also likely to join on this broader regional protocol”—meaning the California governor’s remarks could prove prescient for dining experiences in other parts of the U.S. as well.
As far as when people may begin seeing this new normal, Newsom said the answer isn’t cut and dry. “There is no light switch here. I would argue it’s more like a dimmer,” he stated, “this toggling back and forth between more restrictive and less restrictive measures, more individual accountability, more individual responsibility.” Granted, it’s not the kind of “dimmer” we’re used to for setting restaurant mood lighting, but at this point, dining out under any lighting conditions would be a welcome change of pace.
Kakawa Chocolate House in Santa Fe makes traditional chocolate elixirs, as well as such treats as chocolate-dipped chile de árbol — Photo courtesy of Kakawa Chocolate House
Today, cacao is a staple of Valentine’s Day chocolates, but the food is hardly a modern marvel. Indigenous peoples were consuming cacao in what is now the American Southwest more than a thousand years ago, long before it was shaped into truffles and packaged in heart-shaped boxes.
University of New Mexico archeology professor Dr. Patricia Crown led a team of researchers to two ground-breaking discoveries that placed chocolate in the Southwest centuries before it was thought to have arrived in the region.
Previously, the Spanish were thought to have carted it into the area in the 15th century. Crown and her team — which included W. Jeffrey Hurst, formerly of the Hershey Technical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania — found that the Hohokam peoples consumed cacao in what is now Arizona between 750 and 900 A.D.
Crown also traced chocolate consumption to today’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park, in western New Mexico, to around 900 and 1100 A.D. To discover this connection, the team looked for biomarkers for specific substances in centuries-old ceramics. They found residue of theobromine: a telltale chemical in cacao.
Because cacao can’t grow in the arid southwest, Crown says these discoveries point to trade between the ancient peoples who resided there and Mesoamerica. “It had to come from the tropics. It was a trade item,” she explains. “If you’re going to use it in ritual activity, which is what we think they were doing, you’d have to establish an ongoing supply.”
Crown believes the cacao was consumed as drinking chocolate, similar to how the Aztecs and Maya consumed it. These ancient civilizations have an even longer history of consuming the plant. Their drinking chocolate wasn’t the milky, hot chocolate popular today; cacao powders were dissolved into water, making for a complex, potent elixir.
At Chaco, the team discovered cacao in cylindrical pottery jars made in pairs with lids of sandstone discs. “Hard chocolate, like candy bars, is a relatively recent invention. In the past, cacao was consumed by drinking it or in sauces, like moles,” she says. “Throughout Mesoamerica, the froth was considered the most delicious part. At Chaco, we believe they created froth by pouring the chocolate back and forth between cylindrical jars. That’s why they were made in sets of two to four jars.”
More than a thousand years after cacao’s arrival in the American Southwest, several chocolate shops in Arizona and New Mexico are continuing to tap into these traditions and regional flavors.
Located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Kakawa Chocolate House and Art of Chocolate/Cacao Santa Fe both serve chocolate elixirs. Kakawa celebrates historic European elixirs as well as more traditional Mesoamerican elixirs. Using archeological research and accounts by Spanish settlers, the intimate chocolate house has recreated recipes using ground cacao beans, spices, chile, and herbs.
The Art of Chocolate/Cacao Santa Fe too blends drinking chocolates and elixirs. Historical documents also inspire their recipes, which use unsweetened chocolate that begins in bean form and is roasted and ground in-house. The Zapotec Tejate incorporates ground blue corn, which the indigenous peoples of the Southwest have long cultivated. The Tolteca Notchli is sweetened with prickly pear cactus juice (another local ingredient) and chile powder.
Although they specialize in hardened chocolate bars that the peoples of the ancient Southwest wouldn’t recognize, the bean-to-bar makers at Taos, New Mexico's Chokolá celebrate the “food of the gods.” The craft chocolaterie specializes in single-origin chocolate bars, truffles and mousses. Often its chocolate originates in Central and South America.
In Arizona, Tucson chocolate maker and confectioner Monsoon Chocolate creates truffles utilizing regional flavors — some that may have even been present when the Hohokam were first consuming cacao more than a thousand years ago. For example, the Chiltepin truffle uses dark-chocolate ganache infused with chiltepin pepper: the wild chile pepper native to the Southwest consumed by indigenous peoples. The Sonoran Sea Salt Dark Chocolate truffle is garnished with Tohono O’odham salt from the Sonoran flats at the Gulf of California.
Monsoon Chocolate also draws from more modern inspirations, such as in the Whiskey del Bac Dorado truffle, which layers caramel and chocolate. The chocolate makers infuse both elements with mesquite-smoked whiskey from Tucson spirit-maker Hamilton Distillers. Though it’s a contemporary creation, it’s still imbued with the tastes of the desert where America’s obsession with chocolate first began.
