Atlanta's hotel/motel tax collections up in ‘09
Increased convention traffic this year has pushed hotel/motel tax collections up 10 percent over 2009, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau says.
To date, the city has collected about $20.9 million in the hotel/motel tax, said Gregory Pierce, ACVB executive vice president and chief financial officer. Hotel/motel taxes are a key revenue source for organizations that bring convention and visitor traffic to Atlanta.
The hotel/motel increase should remain strong through the end of the year, especially since hotel occupancy in July climbed above 70 percent for the first time since 2008.
"The main driver of that is the record number of citywides that we had on the books this year," Pierce said.
Citywides are conventions that are so large that they fill rooms in hotels throughout the metro area, not just one or two facilities as may be the case with a small meeting. Metro Atlanta has 19 citywides on the books this year; last year, it had 12.
The city tacks on a 15 percent tax for a night's stay at Atlanta hotels. The first 7 percent goes to the city; toward retiring debt on the Georgia Dome; and to the ACVB and the Georgia World Congress Center to try to attract more conventions and visitors, who in turn help sustain businesses like restaurants, taxi operations and florists.
The remaining 8 percent is sales tax.
Hospitality is an $11 billion industry in metro Atlanta and is the lifeblood for businesses from caterers to laundry services.
Atlanta convention business picked up this year after a dismal 2009 and a slow 2008 because of the economy. The poor performance over the past two years resulted in back-to-back losses at the GWCC, the nation's fourth-largest convention center.
Mark Vaughan, the ACVB's executive vice president and chief sales officer, said year-to-date hotel occupancy is 58.6 percent, up from 53.9 percent the same time last year. Hotels with more than 500 rooms led the way, with 66 percent occupancy so far this year, compared with 59.3 percent in 2009.
Average daily rate, the cost of a room per night, in July was up 0.9 percent over the same time the year before.
Leaders expect more strong occupancy as the city prepares for DragonCon, Black Gay Pride and the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic over the Labor Day weekend.
