by Brian Major
Last updated: 12:10 AM ET, Wed January 8, 2020
Saint Lucia's tourist accommodation fee, reported this past week by TravelPulse and scheduled to go into effect April 1, will support "village tourism" initiatives, local product development and destination marketing in the country, said Dominic Fedee, Saint Lucia's tourism minister.
Destination marketing benefits "all players" in Saint Lucia's tourism industry said Fedee, including accommodation providers, airlines, tour operators, travel agents, ground handlers, sites and attractions.
"It's always a challenge for small countries to allocate much-needed resources towards tourism marketing," Fedee said in a statement issued Tuesday. "The accommodation fee allows tourism to pay for itself, as the tax will be levied to tourists to the island," he said. "[The tax] frees up much-needed funds for healthcare, education and national security."
Overnight visitors to Saint Lucia will pay per-night fees of $3 to $6 respectively on stays priced below or above $120. Fees will be charged by accommodation providers and collected by the Saint Lucia Tourism Authority (SLTA) on the government's behalf.
Guests at sharing platform accommodations in Saint Lucia including Airbnb and VRBO will be subject to a fee of seven percent on the full cost of their stay.
SLTA will implement an automated process "to allow accommodation providers on-island, international tour operators and booking websites to easily remit the fees they collect from stayover guests," said agency officials in a statement.
The system "has built-in mechanisms to verify that the information being provided [will be] accurate. Given that an automated system for remitting the fees collected from guests will be utilized, the cost to accommodation providers will be negligible."
Funds from the taxes will "strengthen SLTA's ability to increase its marketing of Saint Lucia and support tourism development," officials added. The fee "correlates to visitor arrivals," officials added.
Saint Lucia hosts an average of 350,000 land-based, overnight visitors annually. SLTA has set a target of 541,000 overnight visitors by 2022 and also wants "to increase airlift seat capacity and load factor on all flights into Saint Lucia to 85 percent," said officials. SLTA spends $35 million annually on marketing and promotion.
In Tuesday's statement, SLTA officials sought to explain the circumstances surrounding the tax. "The business of promoting a tourism destination is becoming increasingly challenging and highly competitive as countries worldwide try to capture a greater share of the growing tourist market," they said.
"It is now a common practice for countries to finance the marketing of their tourism product through an accommodation fee or levy paid for by stayover visitors to the destination," they continued.
"More established destinations with far greater resources than Saint Lucia [including] Canada, the U.S. and Italy all make use of accommodation fees for destination marketing purposes. Caribbean countries [including] Jamaica, Barbados, Belize, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have implemented accommodation levies," they said.
"As configured, Saint Lucia's tourist accommodation fee is among the lowest in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and other well-established tourist destinations globally," they added.
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