The COVID shutdowns were brutal on a lot of industries, but perhaps none more than tourism. Seattle is no exception, and the struggle to get its tourism ship back on course has been real. Things are looking better now, but a controversial new fee is at the center of it.
Here are Five Fast Facts about Seattle’s new hotel fee:
- ✈️🏨The Setup - Before COVID, almost 40 million tourists were visiting Seattle and King County annually, with more than half of them staying at least one night. This generated $8 billion and sustained about 80k hospitality jobs! In 2020, only 10 million overnight visitors came a-knockin’. But at least they didn’t have to fight crowds, right?
- 2️⃣➡️4️⃣The Change - The Seattle Tourism Improvement Area (STIA) is a special authority requiring dozens of downtown hotels to charge a $2 per room per night fee. This spring, the city council voted to double the fee to $4 to fund marketing campaigns to generate more tourism. Must be nice to wave a magic wand like that…can I get one?
- 💰💰The Projections - In 2019, the STIA generated $8 million; projections for 2022 are around $9.8 million. Once tourism is back to pre-COVID rates, it should raise around $18-19 million per year! This is similar to the level of competing cities like LA and Portland. That’s a lot of brochures!
- 🗺️The Purpose - Most of the money raised by the STIA this year ($6.4 million) will go to advertising campaigns promoting Seattle as a travel destination. Other chunks will pay for staff salaries, partnerships with travel agencies, press and public relations, and special events. And brochures, no doubt.
- 🛒🧹The Objections - Not everyone is happy about this. Some point out a lack of funding from the new STIA cash to fight homelessness, a big problem in downtown Seattle. Others point out a lack of help for hospitality staffing, which is almost 40% lower than pre-COVID levels. This means a big time shortage of workers to handle the recovering visitor rates (not to mention handling the extra demanding cleaning procedures now in effect). #domorewithless
🔥Bottom line: Fees like this tend to affect visitors more than residents, so our Paychecks shouldn’t be unhappy about it. And, if it leads to more visitors each year as intended, well, then that’s gotta be good news for our Paychecks in the long run, right? There are some good arguments for spending some of this money on other things, but first we’ve gotta get the visitors headed our way.
What do you think about this fee? Does it impact your job?
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