The folks that promote tourism in Washington County got an unexpected boost in their budget in 2021. The Greater Zion Convention and Tourism Office saw a 75 percent spike in its income from the transient room tax, the levy charged to visitors staying in the area’s hotels, motels and other temporary lodging.
“In 2021, we exceeded our transient room tax revenue,” Brittany McMichael, assistant director for Greater Zion, told the St. George News. “We were anticipating that we would collect $8 million to $9 million. We ended up collecting over $15 million.”
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 percent increase from 2020, McMichael said.
The transient room tax is collected when visitors pay for their lodging. 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.”
But McMichael cautioned that the increase in funds from the transient room tax may not be sustainable. There is no way to know if the same visitation numbers experienced in 2021 will be the same in 2022, she said.
“I’ve been doing this budget for 20 years and that increase scares me a little. You just never know what’s going to happen,” McMichael said.
Due to the spike in 2021, Greater Zion, which is overseen by a Tax Advisory Board and the Washington County Commission, has a $13.5 million budget for 2022. It is taking money from its balance for tourism-related projects and improvements, McMichael said. Some of the expenditures will include trail and performance center improvements, marketing and a new office. The organization has also set aside some money for its budget fund balance, which is like a savings account, she said. They will also use some of the funds for the new county building in which they will be housed.
“We have a portion of that space that we’re paying for that we will occupy,” she said. “We’re also building a new visitor center. We’ve got money that we are paying towards the visitor center and then we will also pay for a portion of the parking structure that we will occupy.”
Construction is underway on the corner of 100 East and Tabernacle Streets in St. George for a new county administration building where Greater Zion will be housed.
“We’ll be right in the center of town. We’re really excited about the new visitor center,” McMichael said. “It’s going to be a great experience for visitors and locals alike.”
The 2022 Utah Legislature passed a set of amendments to the transient room tax law which will do away with the mandate to spend the bulk of collected transient taxes in the year following their collection. That will allow Greater Zion to save more of its windfall.
McMichael said that over the past 10 years, Greater Zion has shifted from a 100 percent focus on marketing Southern Utah as a destination to management and development of that destination.