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ST. GEORGE — Money from temporary visitor lodging, known as transient room tax, rose over 75% in Washington County between 2020 and 2021. And this unusual uptick gave the Greater Zion Tourism Convention and Tourism Office an unexpected increase in its budget in 2021.
"In 2021, we exceeded our transient room tax revenue," Brittany McMichael, assistant director for Greater Zion Tourism, said. "We were anticipating that we would collect just over 8 (million) to 9 million dollars. We ended up collecting over 15 million dollars."
It was a surprise for the organization since the pandemic had caused a sudden drop in revenue. In 2020, $8,719,437 was collected in transit room tax. In 2021, $15,293,148 was collected, which was a 75.3% increase from 2020, McMichael said.
The transient room tax collected by hotels is directly from visitors. The hotels then remit those taxes to the state and the state sends that money back to the county.
"In 2020, obviously, with that pandemic, we were shut down there for a couple of months. And we really cut our budget back in 2020 because we weren't sure what was going to happen," McMichael said. "But then we were able to keep tourism going through the pandemic safely. We recovered at a level that was very rare within the states."
Read the full article at St. George News.
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