St. Stephen council is looking at implementing a tourism accommodation levy in the town.
A draft bylaw was presented during January’s committee of the whole meeting on Wednesday.
The proposed levy is currently set at 3.5 per cent, the same as what accommodations in Saint Andrews charge.
“We’ve always been putting this on the back burner because we didn’t have the big H beside us over there, the hotel,” Mayor Allan MacEachern said during the meeting.
“But then I come to find out at a meeting with Saint Andrews, actually, there’s a lot of benefit to it, and it wouldn’t hurt to get this in place anyway because we’re going to have that soon.”
How would a levy work?
Under the proposed bylaw, all tourism accommodation operators would have to apply for a registration certificate from the municipality each year. They would collect the levy from guests and remit it to the town on a quarterly basis.
Money collected would be used for tourism promotion, attraction and development, and well as the tourism fee through the Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission.
“It certainly has a lot of benefits capable. It’s just a matter of making sure we do it the right way and we have the capacity to apply it, to implement it in the correct manner,” Jeff Renaud, the municipality’s chief administrative officer, told council.
Coun. Emily Rodas, who said she recently launched an Airbnb, raised some concerns about how businesses could be impacted by a tourism levy.
“Here in St. Stephen, I think the only thing that could be interpreted negatively and what I see is that we don’t have any other accommodations right now,” she said.
“So, when we have a hotel, it’s different. But when we have nothing here and then you’re kind of expecting the business owners who are running these smaller places to be able to offer accommodations, then it feels frustrating because there’s nothing else here. So, it’s almost like a deterrence to starting those types of things.”
St. Stephen lagging behind others: councillor
Coun. Joyce Wright said while there may be some frustration among business owners, she feels the town is lagging behind other municipalities.
“I’ve never stayed anywhere recently where there’s not a levy,” she said. “I don’t travel a ton, but when I do go somewhere, there’s the levy on there.”
Coun. Earle Eastman added that since businesses will be requried to register with the municipality, the town would finally have a better understanding of how many accommodations there are.
“For the levy itself, being hard, all you’ve got to do is make sure your invoice is done right. Because if your invoice is done right, you’re going to put in HST anyways, and you’re going to frigging put the levy in there. So, it’s not that hard,” he said.
Coun. Wade Greenlaw said it will be important for the municipality to get feedback from businesses that currently collect a tourism levy to see if it is going to be a burden on them.
“I’m sure there’s good examples of it in Saint Andrews,” he said. “They can say it’s not much extra work for whoever the business owner is, or it is a lot of work for the business owner.”
No final decisions have been made about the bylaw. If council decides to go ahead with a tourism levy, a public hearing would be held to get input from residents before it is approved.
