Hotel Revenue Up in P.G.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012 @ 3:45 PM
Prince George, B.C.- Increased hotel business in Prince George means good news for Tourism Prince George and the City’s economy as a whole.
The final hotel revenue for 2011 in P.G. was $33.2 million dollars. That’s up 14.2% over the 2010 revenue of $29.1 million.
Since Tourism Prince George collects a 2% tax from hotel revenue, that means Tourism Prince George picked up just over $665 thousand dollars to put towards marketing efforts.
“This growth shows that we are moving in the right direction from a tourism marketing standpoint. It’s one way to really show return on investment for our new organization and it’s essential that we keep this momentum moving forward. We are definitely happy, but not yet satisfied,” says Aidan Kelly, Chief Executive Officer.
A number of factors contributed to the rise in hotel revenues. Some highlights include increased business travel in the region, major sport tourism events such as the World Baseball Challenge, and a rise in leisure travel numbers to the community.
“These numbers speak well for the overall economy of Prince George. There is still significant room for further growth, but to see such a large increase in one year is very encouraging for our community,” says Mary Jane Hannah, Chair of the Board of Directors.
The improved marketing resources made possible by the Additional Hotel Room Tax have been beneficial when it comes to increasing overnight stays in the community. Besides hotel room revenues, larger visitation numbers also help drive many other aspects of business in Prince George such as restaurants, retail, transportation, and attractions.
Comments
I have never liked this tax. To me it is simply a way to tax customers from the outlying areas who come to Prince George to shop.
They are not (REPEAT NOT) tourists. They are shoppers who come here all year long, and spend millions and millions of dollars. They should not be subjected to a so called tourist tax. Business people who come to Prince George are not tourists either, and should not be taxed.
If you take out the shoppers and business people and only taxed the boni fide tourist you wouldnt get much money.
Prince George always screws the out of town shoppers, higher gas, higher cost of automobiles, and now this 2 bit tax on hotel rooms.
Without the shoppers from the outlying areas this town would be **dead**
It would be nice if they would give us some statistics about people who stay in these hotels who do not live in North Central BC.
In other words actual tourists. Not too many of them around if you go by the license plates you see in the City.
Are you sure ? If the price of a hotel room went up 14.2% is there a net gain ?
Anyway, years ago Seattle applied a hotel tax and it financed a baseball stadium and a football stadium. In PG we just give the money to Tourism PG for brochures and a moosey web-site. $665,000 must buy some flashy brochures.
Maybe add another 3% called road improvement tax. It would add another million bucks to the roads budget.
come on gang green get with it.
Resident:
That wouldn’t be fair. If most of our tourists (as Palopu states) are just shoppers from the area, they are only using provincial hi-ways 97 & 16 to get to Wal-Mart and Costco. 1.5% would be more acceptable…..you know….for the the ones that venture off the beaten path into the crater city.
Maybe if tourists damage their cars in our craters and the repair merchants can stall them for a day it could increase tax revenues by having them stay the night “until the part arrives”. Just sayin’.
LOL….Harbinger…..Alaskan taxation…..I love it.
Just like the HST the less tax one has to pay the more money shoppers have to spend here in crater city. I hope it will be a better day tomorrow.
The less tax one has to pay, the more craters in Crater City.
The more tax one has to pay, the less craters in Crater City,
—————————————
The less tax one has to pay the more money shoppers have to spend here in Crater City.
The less tax one has to pay the more money shoppers have to spend here in Crater City and gets sent to China.
—————————————
As with many things in life, it is all about finding an appropriate equilibrium which benefits the most at the least cost to all.
Oh please. Just about any hotel anywhere has a destination or tourism tax. And it’s a lot more than 2%.
Palopu wrote: “They are not (REPEAT NOT) tourists”
And I will counter that with that they are tourists. So who is right and why?
Definition of a tourist?
The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people “travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes.”
So, Palopu, are you saying that even though you are not part of the Tourism Industry, the Tourism Industry should not be setting the definition and standards of their business, but that you should be the one to determine that?
Any other Industry that you are not part of that you feel you are the authority to set their standards? Lawyers? Nurses? Forestry?
Gus. You know what I am talking about. These people come to Prince George to shop at the various box stores that have been located here, and to buy cars, mdse etc;
They do their shopping at Costco, Walmart, etc; . They come every week, or every two weeks and spend millions of dollars. People from MacKenzie, McBride, Vanderhoof, Burns Lake, Fraser Lake, Ft Fraser, Houston, etc;
I am part of the tourism industry and travel to various places on a regular basis, so dont confuse that to people, who through the marketing efforts of huge retail outlets, have been forced to come to Prince George to do their shopping.
The money taken in by the Tourist Bureau is just pissed into the wind. My point is that the people of Prince George who make their living off of those who come here to shop, etc; seem to have a need to screw them over and above what is necessary to make a dollar.
Spend some time this summer looking at licence plates and you will find that **real** tourists are few an far between.
Most of the Tourist in BC are in the Okanogan, Southern Interior, Vancouver Island, or Vancouver. Anyone who ends up in Prince George is heading somewhere else, or they took a wrong turn at Tete Jaune, or Cache Creek and ended up here by accident.
Futhermore your definition of a tourist does not really cover people who come to a City to shop on a regular basis. Ie; 52 weeks of the year. To suggest they are tourists would only be done, to make it possible to tax them and take their money.
Just because other towns have this tax doesnt mean we needed to go to it.
Other towns have paved roads, we dont, why is that. Paved roads and clean streets, are good features for tourist attraction.
Once you get the tourist tax going, then throw in Skakuns gas tax, continue to let the road go to hell, and people will start to find other places to shop. Maybe Walmart, Costco,Super Store, Home Depot, etc could set up a huge shopping mall West of Prince George. This would certainly kill of a lot of business in Prince George. It certainly kept the people in Williams Lake, and Quesnel from coming to Prince George.
I’ve been a tourist driving through Hixon many times. I hope Hixon takes that into account for anything.
“tourists” and “visitors” …. a distinction? … and how are you going to keep the two separate?
Whichever one, the mjority in the Okanagan are from BC and Alberta has been my perception when I am in Kamloops and south and east from there.
Here it is from many USA states since this is one of two ways they can take to go to Alaska.
By far the largest single majority of Tourists in BC are from BC, then Alberta.
http://www.jti.gov.bc.ca/research/IndustryPerformance/pdfs/tourism_indicators/Value_of_Tourism_in_British_Columbia.pdf
Please educate yourself. Then decide what you are going to say based on fact rather than made up fiction.
“In 2007, there were 14.5 million visitors in BC.13 Nearly half of the visitors were BC residents.
“Domestic visitors from other parts of Canada accounted for almost 20% of overall visitor volume and international visitors accounted for the remaining third.
“However, international visitors account for nearly half of visitor expenditures, with Canadian and BC residents each accounting for less than 30% of expenditures.”
That is true internationally. It is first of all a world-wide characteristic that domestic tourist, because they speak the language and know the custom and the market place, are the most savvy and are thus more likely to hunt and find bargains.
In fact, I would add one other aspect, many of them do not have the money to travel internationally. They hop in the car rather than on a plane. They probably seldom figure the cost of gasoline in their vacation costs. However, that data is likely not available, so it is just conjecture on my part. A hypothesis that someone with nothing better do do may wish to explore.
gus: “”tourists” and “visitors” …. a distinction? … and how are you going to keep the two separate?”
I cannot believe Palopu is continuing to argue this. He couldn’t be farther out to lunch on this one.
Palopu: “Just because other towns have this tax doesnt mean we needed to go to it.”
Doesn’t it? If every town is going to have some sort of tourism group, then would you rather fund it through a hotel tax or have it buried in the resident’s property tax?
Mind you, considering your stand on the HST, you generally prefer your tax to be hidden out of view rather than transparent, so maybe it makes sense.
“Maybe Walmart, Costco,Super Store, Home Depot, etc could set up a huge shopping mall West of Prince George. This would certainly kill of a lot of business in Prince George”
They could have done that. But they did not. Why? Because that is not their primary market. Because services were not available at this time.
How many cities that you know of in BC set up their big box retailers outside the city limits? Multi-city metropolitan areas are the only ones who may be placed in that category, and even that is arguable. Look at all the retail malls there are in the City of Vancouver compared to Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, etc.
The market region of the Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna has a population base of something like 400,000. They chose to place the mall to the north, closest to Vernon rather than to the south for some very obvious strategic reasons. But they placed it within the City limits.
No matter how small the population of Prince George is, the total population from the western border of this Census Agglomeration all the way to the West Coast is less than that population of the PG CA. In fact, you can add Mackenzie and everything to the east of us to that and it will still not exceed the population of the PG CA.
There is a good marketing reason why the Box stores located near the Domano/HWY16 intersection. In fact, they are the same reason that Pine Centre located at the Hwy16/97 intersection some 40 years ago.
“It certainly kept the people in Williams Lake, and Quesnel from coming to Prince George.”
I know from anecdotal experience that if people in Williams Lake leave the community to go to a large community for a bit of specialty shopping and R&R, they will drive to Kamloops rather than PG unless they have family or friends here. All one has to do is look at the variety of retail as well as restaurants, entertainment, and the quality of the downtown “hanging out” experience. Even the weather is more cooperative.
Quesnel …. I think they are an island onto themselves that have made themselves a nice little community, despite of what Money Sense says about both Quesnel and Williams Lake.
As usual Gus you miss the point. Dont try and tell me that people who come to Prince George once a week for 52 weeks per year, for shopping for the essential like groceries, school supplies,clothes, cars, tools, etc; etc; etc; are tourists. That is nothing but absolute horseshit. They are for all intents and purposes part of the ***Greater Prince George Area*** and are in fact our best customers.
When I talked about setting up a huge shopping centre West of Prince George I am talking in terms of Houston, or Terrace. Not West of the City.
We nail these people higher gas prices,. higher vehicle prices, hotel prices,. and any other way we can shaft them for a dollar. Pr George has always been a City that gouges its customers.
A boni fide tourist in this town is someone going somewhere else. The only other reason you would come here would be to visit relatives, or you just did not know any better.
Ive been to the lakes, and other areas around Prince George and boni fide tourist are conspicous by there absence.
In fact seems to me a number of years ago the tourist bureau took the number of people who signed the register, and multiplied it by 100 to get the number of tourists who came to Prince George. There rational was that for every person who signed the book, there were 100 who didnt. As a result they have huge numbers of tourists in the area, however they are much like the Sasquatch, lots of possible sightings, but nothing that you can put your finger on.
Call them tourists if you want. I call them customers, and as far as Im concerned we are shafting them. Even those people who have to come here to the hospital,. and later those to the Cancer clinic if they stay in the hotels in the area will be charged the (hotel) tourist tax.
We survived very well over the years without this tax, and we dont need it now. Its just another way to pay people big salaries for sitting on their asses, and directing traffic.
Eat here and get gas.
So everytime I go to Vancouver, I should refuse to pay the tourist tax because I’m just visiting? I wonder how that would go over?
Palopu,
is there anything that happens around here that you support? Sure doesnt seem like it.
Comments for this article are closed.