Hotel Association Says Room Tax Request By Ten Westchester Municipalities Is Anti-business

March 9, 2012 - PRLog -- CONTACT:    Geoff Thompson
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HOTEL ASSOCIATION SAYS ROOM TAX REQUEST
BY TEN WESTCHESTER MUNICIPALITIES IS
ANTI-BUSINESS AND STATE SHOULD REJECT IT

TOWN OF GREENBURGH, NY (March 7, 2012) -- A new request for hotel room occupancy taxes unfairly targets a specific industry and will damage the ability of its members ability to compete for corporate business, the Westchester Hotel Association (WHA) said today. The 31-member group says it is strongly opposed to the attempts by 10 towns and villages in the county to obtain state approval to impose a three percent tax.

The Association said that the hotel industry in Westchester has begun to slowly recover from the three-year recession that saw its business and employment level drop 30 to 40 percent.  At the same time, the key component of the hotels’ business base – corporate bookings – continues to lag as more companies and jobs have been leaving Westchester than coming in.

“There’s never a good time to be hit with a new tax, but this is a particularly damaging moment for the dozens of hotels in Westchester that would be affected by the proposed new room occupancy tax,” said Dan Conte, Association President. “The competition for corporate business from neighboring Connecticut, Rockland and New Jersey is intense, and a tax like this just makes us less competitive. Three percent on the dollar may not sound like a lot, but when you multiply it out over the cost of hundreds and even thousands of room nights, it become a big number. It’s easily enough to make the difference between a company booking a year’s worth of rooms with a hotel in Westchester or choosing one elsewhere.”

The latest round of requests for the tax follows a similar set of requests made last year by the Town of Greenburgh and seven villages. However, the request did not come to a vote by the State Legislature. The Legislature must approve the so-called “home rule” request made by the local communities for the tax. This year eight villages – Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Elmsford, Hastings, Irvington, Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow and Mamaroneck – and the towns of Greenburgh and Harrison, are asking the state to okay the tax for each of them.  Ironically, several of the villages, including Hastings and Irvington, don’t even have any hotels, but apparently are “showing support” for the others.

“It’s not hard to understand the temptation to hit the hotels with a tax,” says Conte, who is General Manager of the Westchester Marriott Hotel in Greenburgh.  “The municipal officials envision the casual traveler who is passing through the county and staying a night or two at one of our hotels as the one who is actually paying the tax. They see that person as kind of an easy mark. The problem is that that casual travelers are not the backbone of our business, corporate bookings are.  And for today’s businesses, all of whom operate on extremely tight travel budgets and who are booking hundreds of rooms annually, an extra three percent on the bill is more than enough to chase them away.”

Conte said the WHA will ask the state legislators to consider the significant negative economic impact posed by the room occupancy tax plan and reject it.  “We are aware of the financial difficulties many municipalities are having because of tax caps and their reluctance to raise property taxes that are born by all of their residents and businesses. But singling out one economic sector to be a municipal funding source sends a strong anti-business message at the very time the State and County are desperately trying to attract and retain businesses. It’s the wrong signal to be sending to one of the county’s largest sources of employment.”

He noted that the idea put forth by some of the municipalities that a small portion of the tax would be dedicated to fund local tourism and business promotion does nothing to offset the impact of the overall tax. “Westchester County already dedicates 15 percent of its existing three percent room occupancy tax to tourism promotion. Doing something like this on a local level is not effective.  If the local municipalities seriously want to help the hotels in their communities, they’ll stop trying to single us out and hit us with local room occupancy taxes.”              

The Westchester Hotel Association’s 31 members include hotels, inns, motels and conference centers that account for 5,340 guest rooms and employ more than 2,500 workers.  The county room occupancy tax coupled with state and local sales taxes currently add up to more than 10 percent across Westchester. The proposed new tax sought would result in taxes of 13 to 14 percent for hotels in the affected communities.