The Halifax Herald - August 5, 2006 Back to Archive

Cape Breton will Try Again to Levy Room Tax

By JOCELYN BETHUNE

SYDNEY&emdash;Destination Cape Breton will try again to launch a controversial marketing levy this fall by excluding some tourism operations.

"It's not definite yet, but it looks like we won't be including operations under 10 rooms," Gordon Heading, chairman of the non-profit group, said Thursday. "We'll be having meetings this fall."

This spring, Destination Cape Breton tried to launch a levy of two per cent or less on every room rented on Cape Breton Island to raise funding for advertising. But the group ran into opposition when a number of bed and breakfast owners and small tourism operators balked at both the levy and the proposed method of introducing it.

The province adopted the levy but it wasn't proclaimed into law. Four municipal councils on the island refused to pass a bylaw that would have made the levy enforceable.

Mr. Heading said the money that could be raised from a levy is vital to the tourism industry.

"If we don't do it, we are all dead, as far as tourism," he said. "This is actually a crisis situation."

At one time, Enterprise Cape Breton funded a number of marketing plans for the island, but it stopped about five years ago and suggested island tourism operators charge a levy on rooms, similar to a Halifax marketing initiative, Mr. Heading said.

Cape Breton has been relying heavily on being included in provincial tourism campaigns, but a separate island promotion is crucial, he said.

"They (the province) use our icons, but they don't say that the beautiful scenic drive is the Cabot Trail," he said.

Scott MacAulay, owner of Cape Breton resorts in Baddeck, Ingonish and Dundee, said the industry is changing and a marketing levy would allow Cape Breton to market its icons separately.

"We need to do things differently and the levy is a source of funding that is the kind of thing that we need to happen right now," he said. "There's a saying, 'If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.' The world is changing."