Salem short-term rental operators will soon face a new city fee after the Salem City Council gave final approval Monday to Ordinance Bill No. 4-26, extending the city’s Tourism Promotion Area assessment to short-term rentals and accessory short-term rentals. The ordinance passed March 23 and brings Airbnb- and VRBO-style lodging into the same tourism promotion system that already applies to hotels and motels.
The move adds Salem’s 2 percent Tourism Promotion Area fee on top of the city’s existing 9 percent transient occupancy tax for qualifying overnight stays. City materials say the tourism fee is used to support destination marketing intended to increase overnight visits, with 95 percent of the revenue going to the city’s destination marketing organization, currently Travel Salem, and up to 5 percent retained by the city for administration.
For the city, the argument is largely about parity. Salem already treats short-term rentals and accessory short-term rentals as lodging uses for tax and licensing purposes. Operators of those rentals must register, collect and remit transient occupancy tax, and the city licenses both hosted and non-hosted forms of short-term lodging under its code. By adding those operators to the Tourism Promotion Area, city officials are effectively saying businesses competing for overnight visitors should contribute to the same promotional system…