GEORGE TOWN, Nov 6 — The Penang government will determine if its hotel room fee is still necessary now that it will get a share of the tourism tax collected by Putrajaya, said Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow.
He said Penang is due to receive more than RM10 million from the tax collection.
“So, we will decide whether to continue with the state’s hotel room fees that we have been collecting since 2014,” he said.
Chow explained that the allocation was more than enough to fund its planned tourism promotions.
He said the state currently has a committee that decides how the revenue collected from the hotel room fee is spent on tourism promotion activities.
The committee consists of tourism stakeholders such as the Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) Penang and related government agencies, he said.
“We will use this same method to improve tourism services or to promote Penang overseas using the funds channelled back to us from the federal government,” he said.
In 2014, the state government introduced the hotel room fee that requires visitors to pay RM3 per room per night in hotels above four stars and RM2 per room per night for hotels three-star and below.
When tabling Budget 2019 on Friday, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng announced that 50 per cent of tourism tax collected will be shared with the respective state governments.
Lim, a former Penang chief minister, said this will enable the respective state governments to receive additional revenue of up to RM50 million.
