James Doolan: Hotel Council Aotearoa Strategic Director on ACT's proposed alternative to a bed tax

ACT's alternative to a bed tax is being welcomed by tourism leaders.  

The party's promising one dollar be given to local councils for each guest night in their area, funded through GST and levies already paid by tourists. 

It's estimated the dividend would give councils more than $40 million annually.  

Hotel Council Aotearoa strategic director James Doolan told Mike Hosking ACT is the first party to acknowledge the fundamental problem operators are facing.  

He says a huge amount of tax is collected from tourists and not enough of it goes back to local communities. 

Doolan told Hosking $5 billion in tourism GST is collected each year, and while ACT has acknowledged the problem, there are some questions about mechanisms and quantum. 

He says the number for Auckland alone should be about $40 million.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's a new idea around the broad bed tax sort
of theme. Act wants a one dollar local Tourism dibdend
for every guest night that would be paid directly to
councils from existing government revenue. To give you some sort
of sense, it'll be about forty million dollars a year,
or can gets a bit over eight Queenstown five road
Ruer two. James Dolan is the strategic director of the
Hotel Councilors with US. James Morning, Morning, Mike. I can't

(00:22):
work out what it is. Just money. So someone turns
up in a hotel room and pace. It doesn't matter
what you call it or how you do it, does
it well.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
So Acts doing something a little bit different. They're not
creating a new tax, and they're the no new taxes party,
so you'd expect that, but they're the first party to
acknowledge the fundamental problem. We have a huge amount of
tax is collected from tourists, but not a lot of
it goes back, or not enough of it goes back
to the local communities that host the tourists. So ACTOR

(00:50):
saying they're not going to create a new one dollar charge,
They're just going to share out some of the central
government tax So I welcome the idea, the knowledgement that
we have a problem. They're the first major political party
to acknowledge the problem. But then we've got to start
talking about quantum and mechanism.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Well, so this basically is the old rates gust argument,
isn't it well correct?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
And so you know, talking about mechanism, they proposed one
dollar p pervers tonight per guest night. I mean, a
simpler mechanism would be to talk about percentages, wouldn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, exactly. Now, I tell you what this sounds like.
It sounds like devolution, Andy Boonham, left wing labor PM
in Britainy, you're devolving the central government away to the regions.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
How I look, I don't agree with you fully on
that because around the world, different regions where then countries
compete for tourism because they have their own sales taxes,
so they get the benefit of tourism. You know, American
cities with their own sales taxes, they get the benefit
of tourism, and that's why tourism and sports and everything

(01:54):
in America is fantastic. So we've got one simple, simple GST.
But government's collecting five billion, five thousand million in tourism
GST every single year. And as you've just seen, the
ACT party has suggested that the local governments get about
forty million, or less than one cent in every dollar

(02:15):
of tourism taxes. So the problem, it's not a left
wing devolution thing. What it is is we need to
approach this problem and I applaud ACT for approaching it.
How do we share the massive amount of tourism tax
with the people who actually host the tourists?

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Okay, so ensharing it? Would you do? See I can
see why Auckland gets a bit and Queenstone gets a bit.
But you'd need to do it in other areas, wouldn't
you otherwise which people would claim it's unfair.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Of course, you've got to do it everywhere nationally with
a formula that doesn't change and isn't at risk of
being changed by politicians from time to time. And forty
million dollars for the entire country I mean Wayne Brown
and Hotel Council that the number for Auckland alone should
be about forty million. So there's some again good stuff

(03:06):
from Act. They've acknowledged the problem, but already we have
five billion dollars of GST. We have two hundred and
thirty million collected at the border, two hundred and thirty
million at IPL and we need act to tell us
whether that money is also going to deal with visitor pressure,
which is what it was originally designed to do.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Good time, you have a good weekend, jamesppreciate it very much,
and of course some national appear to be on board
looking at some sort of arrangement post the election. James Dillon,
who's the strategic director at the Hotel Council. For more
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