TT pleased with hotel room taxes

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Nov 21, CMC – The Trinidad and Tobago government said it had received more than TT$51 million (One TT dollar=US$0.16 cents) in hotel room taxes last year.
Officials here said that the hotel room tax is directly applied at a rate of 10 per cent to the proceeds from letting out rooms at hotels comprising six or more rooms.
They say that this tax is not applied to any other revenue that hotels generate from ancillary services. Tourism Minister Randall Mitchell says these numbers signify that the accommodation sector generated TT$517,119,360 from room rentals in fiscal 2017, and that this is the fifth consecutive year that the sector has surpassed half a billion dollars in room rentals.
He said the current projected estimated revenues due for hotel room taxes for fiscal 2018 is TT$52.5 million.
Mitchell said the tourism sector supports approximately 24,000 jobs directly and 60,000 jobs in total and that the Ministry of Tourism looks forward to collaborating with its stakeholders in the accommodation sector and their representative associations.