Hello higher hotel taxes, goodbye convention center expansion?
That’s the question I have reading about Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s push to boost Boston’s already high hotel room tax even higher.
These are desperate times and there may simply be no other way to raise the kind of cash needed to spare the city from massive cuts.
The mayor has proposed a 2 percent bump in the tax rate on city hotel rooms, up to 14.45 percent.
But in doing so, city officials are also tapping a financing mechanism, one that some in the local hotel and convention industry have come to view as the property of the city’s sprawling meeting complex in South Boston.
An earlier increase to the hotel tax played a key role in helping finance the new, $800 million-plus Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
And with talk about a major expansion of the hall brewing, some in the local convention industry were clearly hoping to go back to that well again when the time came for adding onto the center.
But that idea just got a lot harder. It is one thing to boost the hotel tax to 14.45 percent, but it will surely be that much harder to boost it again to 16 or 17 percent to pay for a grand new addition to Boston’s new meeting hub.
That could very well meet some stiff political resistance.
In percent terms Boston does not have the highest city hotel tax in the country.
However, given our high hotel rates, in pure dollar terms, the amount hotel guests will be paying ranks right up there.
We are now looking at nearly $30 a night in taxes on a $200 room.
That’s real money and it could make raising it higher for a convention center expansion that much harder.