By Jennifer Quam

Last week the McBride Chamber of Commerce hosted a meeting to re-pitch the idea of a 2% room tax to accommodation owners within the municipality. The idea was met with apprehension.

The proposal is to place a 2% tax on every room rate. The money would be submitted to the provincial government, who would then in turn send those funds back to the Village of McBride to use at their discretion for promotion.

The Chamber estimates that the Village has the opportunity to access approximately $26,000 a year based on 100 rooms at 60 percent occupancy.

Only three of the six accommodations that might be affected attended the information session.

“As McBride goes through economic change, it is essential that business, municipal leaders, and the general public work together to ensure that McBride continues to be a viable, sustainable community,” said Chamber President Lenny Stone.

The Chamber explained to the owners what their group does for businesses within McBride including holding the tenure with the Ministry of Forests for the snowmobile contract, attend the Winter and RV snow show in Edmonton annually as a way of promoting the community as a whole, organizing and promoting the local passport to Christmas shopping program, and facilitate the Visitors Guide.

Stuart Philpot, owner of Beaver Creek Cabins, said he appreciates the Chamber for holding the snowmobile contract and having a partnership in running the Info booth as his business benefits from those efforts.

“My biggest fear about a room tax is that the money given to the municipality would used for day-to-day operations,” said Philpot. “I also think that if something like this was to go through, the hotel owners would have to have a direct say in where the money goes.”

Philpot said that he believes that in the winter the town enjoys 100% occupancy on weekends directly related to snowmobiling and other winter activities saying that McBride simply does not have enough accommodations and is not in a position to have to recruit more users.

“I think that 80% of our traffic that stays here is not related to marketing what so ever,” he said.

Philpot and wife Jill have owned and operated the Beaver Creek Cabins, a seven-unit resort, for three years.

“We were opposed to a room tax when it was presented two years ago because we did not see the value in what the money would be spent on,” said Philpot.

This time around Philpot said he is more open to at least exploring the option because of the chance to have the money matched dollar for dollar.

“There needs to be an extremely good business plan though, stating where the money would go,” he said.

Chamber secretary Dannielle Alan said there is the opportunity that a room tax collection be matched through Northern Tourism.

“These funds would allow us to market our community in places like Europe as well as in North America,” said Alan. “Our visitor stats are up by about 20% so far this year and most of that is from advertising where visitors are saying they came here because they saw our ad. With money like this to help with marketing and infrastructure improvements, the goal is to have things for visitors to do that would get them to stay here one more day. By getting them to stay that extra day we are doubling the business.”

The next step in this process is that the Chamber present the proposal to the Village of McBride who, if it agrees with the idea, would allow for a public meeting to be held where written or oral submissions could be submitted by accommodation providers approving or opposing the plan.