Australia’s powerful tourism-accommodation lobby has come out against a push for a bed tax in Byron Bay.
The proposal for a levy as a way of funding the popular holiday town’s infrastructure is central to a call by councils affected by big tourist numbers.
Byron shire mayor Simon Richardson says it’s popular with ratepayers faced with 1.5 million tourists a year visiting their town, and a no-brainer for rising much-needed funds rather than unpopular rate rises.
He says many countries around the world have adopted the bed tax successfully.
But the Accommodation Association of Australia (AAA), as many expected, has come out strongly against the bed tax, saying it would oppose any move to impose it in popular tourist destinations.
Cr Richardson said the reaction by the AAA is predictable, despite the tax in other countries not affecting tourism industries in holiday destinations.
‘It’s something that most visitors fully expect to pay and have the capacity to pay,’ he told media.
AAA chief executive Richard Munro said a bed tax was a ‘risky move’ as not just accommodation outlets but food and other businesses thrived from high visitor numbers spending locally.
‘If you start putting levies on the consumers, you’re going to find that people are going to start looking around; people are price-sensitive,’ Mr Munro told ABC North Coast.
Cr Richardson said the fear that visitors would be scared off with such a tax was ill-founded as ‘most of the world does it’, with no negative impact on tourism.
I totally disagree that visitors to Byron will be put off by BED TAX.
I SPENT A MONTH TRAVELLING IN EUROPE AND TOOK IT FOR GRANTED THAT THERE WAS A BED TAX PLACED ON SOME ACCOMMODATIONS. WE WANTED TO COME TO THE AREA AND THE FACT THAT THERE WAS A BED TAX MADE ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE TO US WANTING TO STAY AT THAT ACCOMMODATION.
THIS IS THE BEST WAY FOR BYRON SHIRE TO BE ABLE TO PAY FOR SOME OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND MAINTENANCE AS A RESULT OF HIGH NUMBERS OF TOURISTS. WHY SHOULD I THE RATE PAYER FOOT THE BILL FOR TOURISTS?
IF WE WERE TO MAKE A TRIAL FOR ONE YEAR IT WOULD SHOW THAT TOURISTS WANT TO COME HERE REGARDLESS OF A COUPLE OF DOLLARS ON TOP OF THEIR $100 [ $200 PER NIGHT STAY.
User pays. Not us guys out in the hills who pay rates and get zero services.
In (almost) the words of Mandy Rice-Davies, well they would say that wouldn’t they! Paid parking was introduced as a way to make day trippers to Byron Bay contribute to the infrastructure costs. Many visitors to the town don’t pay it as they can park on site. A bed tax is the best way for those people to take some of the burden off rate payers. I hope Council will continue their long on-going efforts to have the state government enact the legislation necessary for such a tax to happen.
I’m all for a bed tax. We moved to Byron Shire in 1976 after visiting the area in the late sixties on our way north to Noosa and have watched the town and surrounding areas grow to such an extent we often can’t even drive into Byron due to the heavy traffic. We moved to Federal in 1977 and I’m amazed at the growth of this little village. All our little towns Mullumbimby and Bangalow are also feeling the impact of more people and who can blame people for wanting to live here. It’s a beautiful area. I drove around Mullum a couple of times the other day trying to find a park.
We have travelled to countries where a bed tax is incorporated into the accommodation, especially in the US where they show the breakdown of the total cost and the bed tax is usually only a couple of dollars, nothing that would stop tourists from visiting the area. The AAA is scaremongering to say a bed tax would stop tourists coming, and if that were the case, some of us locals, especially those who live in town, wouldn’t find that a problem.
Before moving permanently to the Byron shire we were regular annual visitors for some 20 plus years. We would not have minded paying extra provided the rationale for doing so was explained to us. Years ago at Sorrento back beach in Victoria we had to pay $ a car load to park there and at some of the other Victorian Beaches during the summer, at that time it was explained the money would pay for the cost of providing toilets and rubbish bins etc. We were fine with that as it made sense then for the user to pay and not to expect rate payers to cover the increase to maintenance costs.Fair is fair after all! It really is just a case of common sense and we should not allow our funding decisions to be influenced by the Tourism lobby or anyone else. Please get on with it BSC, you don!t need to wait for the results of a skewed survey to know that any rate rise is unpopular without also obtaining some tax from the visitors to our region.
What Australia really needs – to introduce the myriad taxes, service charges and other imposts that travelers in other countries face. We introduced GST to simplify our tax system and remove inequities in how different kinds of spending were taxed. Now some people want to introduce what would be an additional sales tax on accommodation. Keep our tax system fair and simple. Pay your rates like everyone else does and don’t try and introduce a new impost that would inevitably set off calls to additionally tax other goods and services that are seen as easy targets, so other people are forced to pay more than the standard 10%.
There is as much of a risk that all Byron residents are “put off” and a risk that people move elsewhere taking all the vibe, culture and creativity what makes this shire with them. Absolutely pro bed tax – so common in other parts in the world – in Germany you even pay a local tax when you enter the beach.. we don’t want to go that far, but still it does not people from going to the beach.
A user – pay model is what is needed, residents pay council rates, tourists pay s tourist or bed tax – with 1.5M official visitors – assuming an average stay of 2 nights – 5$ tax per day >>> 15M to spend on infrastructure!
Why not charge them the $5 a day, and allow them to claim that as a discount on their rates back home, because they are not using the facilities there? Let’s let everyone pay rates in every centre, and claim it back off their own council. And when Byron residents drive to Ballina, let them pay a toll on the shire roads – perhaps in the Northern Rivers tradition a little wooden box beside each road or street. Why not put a credit card machine on the new water fountain in Mullum, – if your account is outside the local area you an pay for that too? And different people use facilities more than others – so why not meter each hotel room to count how many dunny flushes each tourist makes? Or you can accept like everyone else that there are swings and roundabouts in these things, that we do not pay to go to our beach or anyone else’s in Australia, that we are thankfully free of the various fees, add-ons and imposts that plague so many countries, and that we settled in the glory days of Howard and Costella on one fair and equitable rate and means of taxing goods and services.
I support the proposal for a bed tax. In our community it is a no brainer. We need our rates to provide basic services for the residents of the Shire and not be eaten into by the costs of tourism. Even with a bed tax international tourists will still come here. Ours is a unique and wonderful place to visit. The lobbyists are doing what they are paid to do and making noises on behalf of the tourism industry. That doesn’t make them right. We (the silent majority) need to make some noise and let the mayor know we are behind him 110%.