Regional District Supports Hotel Tax Increase
Prince George, B.C. – More support for Tourism Prince George’s application for an increase in the Municipal and Regional District Hotel Tax.
The Regional District of Fraser-Fort George decided at its most recent board meeting to provide a letter of support to see it increased from 2% to 3%.
“In our case it doesn’t directly apply, but we get some indirect benefits out of this,” says Board Chair Art Kaehn. “I mean people do drive and travel through the unincorporated part of the regional district and work with Tourism Prince George is going to benefit all of us.”
He acknowledges those benefits are sometimes hard to see.
“But we partner with local municipalities and in a number of things – economic initiatives, tourism initiatives, marketing, the local development offices.
“Tourism Prince George makes a lot of sense because what they do is going to spill over into the regional district and throughout the North so it just makes sense to support the proposal.”
Erica Hummel of Tourism Prince George told Prince George City Council last month the 1% hike would add about $400,000 a year to the Tourism Prince George budget and would add about a dollar a day to the cost of a travellers accommodation.
She also said .2% of that 1% boost would be put towards provincial sport tourism which is used to attract larger events to B.C.
City Council unanimously approved moving forward with the application.
If approved, the new tax take effect July 1, 2017 but to gain approval it has to be supported by 51% of the accommodation property owners, representing 51% of available rooms in the city.
Comments
How can the min.wage earners afford the increase? Have to sleep in the car if they have one.
It’s rare for a municipality to not have this tax. I’m sure a 1% increase in PG accommodations isn’t putting anyone on the street.
why would I be surprised to read this group supports a tax increase when they are the the ones benefiting from it?
Once again we are being subjected to a tax increase by an unelected group of people.
Tourism BC should be getting their financing from the City that they work in. Ie; Prince George BC. which they do to the tune of some $327,000.00 per year from the city.
Most of this hotel tax is being paid for by people from the surrounding areas and being spent by the Tourist people on First Ave, supposedly on marketing to attract tourists to Prince George and area.
The original 2% generated roughly $800,000.00 per year and an additional 1% will generate a further $400,000.00 per year, add on the Cities portion of $327,000.00 and Tourism Prince George is now being funded to the tune of $1,500,000.00 per year or more.
Every time someone from Burn Lake, Vanderhoof, Ft St James, MacKenzie, or any other part of the North Central Interior, stay overnight in Prince George they have to pay these additional taxes. Some people who come to town on a regular basis for the week-end (for whatever reason) will be paying this tax over and over and over again.
If this latest increase goes through people staying in Prince George hotels/motels will pay 3% tourist tax, 5% GST 8% hotel tax, for a total tax on their hotel bill of 16%.
Seems to me this taxing the hell out of people for all sorts of different reasons, ie; Airport Improvement Fee’s, Hotel tax, etc; etc is getting out of hand.
Really, this appears to be total BS. increasing the tax rate by 50%. Let’s choke the golden goose, to see if egg production goes up.
What are we getting for the money. I think it is empire building, careful, remember what happened to Initiatives!!!!
pgjohn- Maybe there will be noone on the street but it is just another
way to widen gap.Every other item is going up but the minimum wage is not.
Palopu,
You said it best. I used to travel to Vancouver for concerts and preferred to stay near B.C. Place, Rogers arena. I was treated to a “basic” room charge of $250/ night. The fees added including the various taxes would push that room north of $320 a night. Guess where I no longer travel to for concerts, yup Vancouver.
It’s a crying shame that a couple can no longer spend their money at home. We can do 7-10 nights with air in Las Vegas for the price of 3 nights with air in Vancouver.
I can’t see Vancouver getting any of our money for a very, very long time if ever at all again.
You have to hand it to the bureaucrats in Victoria. They managed to find a sneaky way to generate more money for the Province by getting the local tourism organizations to take the heat for a 1% bump in the local hotel room tax.
It is of course only a .8% increase in potential revenue for the local tourism folks to better promote the region and a .2% increase that will be collected province wide (likely in the tens of $ millions) and dumped into a slush fund to help Victoria pay for big events like the Olympics or World Cup.
So they quietly collect more tax dollars from medium and small communities around the province to help financial major events that likely will only occur in Vancouver and maybe Victoria. And the rich get richer. Well played, take it from the poor and give it to the rich and nobody say it coming, well played indeed.
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