That much-anticipated event you’ll attend in 2025 may get vital support from tourism grants funded by hotel and motel tax revenues collected by your county or city. How are those funds allocated?
By Matt Benoit
From Jan. 23 to 25, hundreds of people gathered at the Bellingham waterfront for the Fire and Story Festival, a wintertime arts celebration featuring live music, storytelling, bonfires and warm libations.
These nights of merriment were made possible by Paper Whale, a local nonprofit that describes itself as a community-focused “cultural accelerator” producing multisensory events. Paper Whale’s promotion and organization of Fire and Story were made possible by a grant from the City of Bellingham, as part of its annual allocation of city lodging taxes.
The tax is among the smaller percentage fees (usually 3 to 4%) that any person staying in a short-term rental of less than 30 days would see on a receipt for their nightly rate. The tax is applied for stays in hotels, motels, short-term vacation rentals, RV parks and bed-and-breakfasts.
Nearly all municipalities in the state institute lodging taxes of some kind. In Whatcom County, this includes the county itself and unincorporated areas like the Lummi Nation. The same goes for Skagit County, most of its cities and the San Juan Islands. For smaller municipalities, these tax amounts are often measured in tens of thousands of dollars; for larger ones (and smaller ones heavily trafficked by tourists), numbers easily reach six figures.
But who gets that money, and who decides?
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