Queenstown council calls for urgent bed tax pilot
Wednesday, 25 July 2018
Queenstown will face economic decline and its hard-fought international reputation will hang in the balance without a bed tax, a district council submission to central government says.
The Queenstown Lakes District Council has called for a law change to enable a Local Visitor Levy (bed tax) for high-visitor growth areas, in its submission to the Government's proposed International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVCTL).
In the submission, Mayor Jim Boult says the proposed contestable levy would not go far enough to meet the 'quantum' of challenges facing the district.
'Due to the sheer magnitude of the visitor numbers and the low ratings base within the district, QLDC will be unable to maintain or improve existing visitor infrastructure effectively in future without the provision of a Local Visitor Levy.
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'This would herald an inevitable era of national and local uncertainty, with our key industry's social license at risk, the threat of economic decline ever present and our hard-fought-for international reputation hanging in the balance.'
The council is 'urgently seeking' to work with central government to pilot a Local Visitor Levy.
'With 34 visitors annually for every resident (Auckland ratio being 1:1), our community faces the daunting challenge of heavily subsidising tourism infrastructure to the extent that this will eventually be untenable, as we exhaust future funding options.'
If proposal was progressed, 'rapid and concurrent' consideration should be given to the development of a bed tax for implementation within the same timeframe, the submission says.
'Identification of a fair, equitable and sufficient levy for our district has become a burning issue and is the subject of significant discourse within our community.
'The risk to our taonga is very real and the degradation of our visitor experience imminent.'
A detailed business case analysis had shown some form of localised funding, commensurate with the volume of visitors and their associated infrastructure needs, was now the only avenue for the community, it says.
Internationally, bed taxes had been applied for decades in highly desirable tourism locations and the potential as an alternative funding mechanism was widely accepted.
'The models vary from a percentage-based approach to a dollar figure and clearly we have yet to work through what that could look like for QLDC.
'The solution will need to be shaped to ensure that our local industry consider such a levy can both be applied and work.'