Tourism officials are welcoming the launch of the new paperless ED card system that has been introduced at the VC Bird International Airport as they say this will help with the collection of revenues that often go uncollected.
Those were the sentiments expressed by Tourism Minister, Charles Fernandez and ABTA Chief Executive Officer, Colin C. James at the launch exercise on Monday.
“Apart from the visitor experience of a seamless entry and departure, we want to ensure that we capture all of the taxes that our visitors pay as separate and apart from the government’s share, our (tourism’s) share goes to marketing the destination. We have seen increases where last year was a record year in terms of arrivals, but we want to see that translate into record tax collection. These taxes are not on the properties but are on the guests. Everywhere now is taxing visitors so there is nothing new or onerous. That is important for us and we are working with the ministry of finance to see how we can collaborate to get every penny to ensure that we can properly market the destination,” he emphasized.
CEO James explained that the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority uses ‘every penny’ it gets in marketing the destination so the more people who come to the country, the authority expects to see higher collections.
“All those villas that are selling their rooms for US$10,000.00 per night and don’t pay their taxes, we will now know who is staying there and you will be forced to remit the taxes so that the people of Antigua and Barbuda can benefit from the taxes that you collect and maybe not pay in,” he declared.
Additionally, James said the system provides very detailed information on visitors and that this will also help in fine-tuning marketing efforts in the future.
