Starting on April 1st hotels and motels in Huntsville are charging a 4 per cent accommodation tax.
The new charge is expected to generate $750,000 annually that will be used to help promote tourism and upgrade facilities likely to be used by visitors to the area.
Two properties on the edges of Huntsville are exempt until the majority of American Plan and Housekeeping resorts in the other areas of Muskoka are also charging.
Assistant manager of the Clyffe House Andrew Scott says his family is relieved it will not have to participate for now. The business has been in his family since it opened in the late 1800s on Mary Lake in Port Sydney.
“To pay four per cent to advertise to international visitors, going into other tourist activities that our customers aren’t necessarily interested doesn’t make that much sense,” he says. “I would rather invest that four per cent back into the business.”
He says visitors to their property have been coming for decades and there would be little benefit to their resort from the new tax.
Because the two exempted properties are some distance out of central Huntsville the Town’s Economic Development Coordinator Scott Ovell said in a report that Cedar Grove Lodge and Clyffe House Resort should remain exempt from the provisions of the by-law.
Scott says their property is meant to be affordable for families. With large cabins that feature as many as five rooms, a weekly rate of $1800 is the norm in the summer.
“Likely we would have had to eat the tax,” he says. “For us, we are a historic resort that has been around since 1885. We have older buildings that need upgrades, that need to meet new government standards.”
Scott says when you start comparing their resort to short term rentals on AirBnB an even bigger gap is created when HST is not charged, plus a four per cent accommodation fee. A 17 per cent difference can start making people shop around.
“It’s a tough business when you are held to a higher standard,” he says.”We are very pleased we got an exemption.”
(This version is an update clarifying that Clyffe House Resorts and Cedar Grove Lodge are not subject to the tax until the majority of other resort properties in the area are charging the accommodation fee.)
