No plans for Johor bed tax

No plans for Johor bed tax

The state government has no plans to introduce a bed tax for foreign tourists staying in hotels here.

State tourism, women, family and community development committee chairman Liow Cai Tung said the tax was not needed as there was already a tourism tax of RM10 implemented since 2018.

“However, the state government will consider the bed tax if there is a need, ” she said in her reply to Datuk Sharifah Azizah Syed Zain (BN-Penawar) and Ng Yak Howe (PH-Bentayan) during the state assembly sitting held at Bangunan Sultan Ismail here yesterday.

Other states that have implemented a bed tax for tourists are Penang and Melaka, while Pahang will implement it next year.

She said Johor, which collected a total of RM15.8mil in tourism tax throughout 2018, was the fourth highest in Malaysia after Sabah, Penang and Selangor.

Liow said the tourism tax was collected by the Customs Department based on the Tourism Tax Act 2017, where RM10 was charged on foreign tourists who stayed a night in hotels.

The Johor Jaya assemblyman, on March 27 this year, said the Federal Government, through the Finance Ministry, allocated 50% from tourism tax collection in 2018 to each state government.

“Johor received RM7.99mil as new revenue for the state, where 50% allocation was known as ‘tourism gift’, ” she said.

She said the allocation was used to fund maintaining and providing tourism accessibility, promoting and marketing tourism destinations and upgrading tourism statistics reports to the Tourism and Culture Ministry.

Liow said that the state government allocated RM8.29mil, which is more than the tourism gift value, for expenditure in the tourism sector.

Liow added that the state government was targeting RM27.32bil in tourism spending for next year in conjunction with Visit Johor Year 2020 (VJY2020).

“The state received benefits in terms of returns in the form of tourist spending where Johor received RM23.43bil in 2017, RM24.8bil in 2018 and the target this year is RM26.04bil.

“On VJY2020, we are targeting 18.4 million visitors with 8.4 million tourists staying at least a night in Johor, where their expenditure is expected to be RM27.32bil, ” she added.

~The Star~