I could be wrong but I think the hotel tax in Downtown Seattle is similar to the BIA that funds the MID, but it's separate and funds Visit Seattle.
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There are 2 separate things. 1) The lodging tax, 7% in Seattle, 2.6% elsewhere in King County, is a tax that mostly goes to the convention center Public Facilities District, although some of the money also goes to other uses like 4Culture. dor.wa.gov/education/in... 1/2
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2/2 2) The Seattle Tourism Improvement Area charges a “fee” of 2.3% from the hotels that are part of the area, 70ish hotels in in the general Downtownish area. This money goes to Visit Seattle for tourism marketing. In practice, both show up as line items on hotel bills that the customer pays.
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The lodging tax is mixed in with other sales taxes. The 7% replaces a portion of the regular sales tax, and comes to a total of 15.7%. The STIA fee is on top of that.
sep 1, 2025, 6:08 pm • 1 0 • view
I appreciate all the background info. Not gonna lie I’m still disoriented by all of it. My beef with DMO is that they get funded by taxes but don’t have any requirement that I’m aware of to promote Car free travel. Almost all of their content with a very very few exceptions promotes driving.
sep 1, 2025, 6:19 pm • 1 0 • view
Of course not; that's not "tourism" it is "transportation" and is, thus, someone else's problem. If it was tourism, then they'd do things like sponsor ORCA cards and printed system maps for visitors and lean on ST to get fare payment improvements moving after three years of delays. (sarcasm)
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But the tourism sector also includes rental car companies and huge parking fees at hotels. So, promoting transit, or other non-car mobility would cut into their business.
sep 1, 2025, 6:32 pm • 1 0 • view
Except for, ya know, that sizable portion of the population they aren't serving who can't drive.
sep 1, 2025, 6:38 pm • 1 0 • view
And who have been so overlooked and so many of whom would prioritize visiting places that actually fucking acknowledge us.
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2/2 at best there might be one or two webpages that have really generic information about destinations that are served by transit or other modes.
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From what I know, the STIA ("Seattle Tourism Improvement Area") is a bog standard BIA that overlaps with (and is larger than) the Metropolitan Improvement District but the STIA ordinance says "hotels with 60 rooms or more" and requires the program admin to be focused on tourism.
sep 1, 2025, 5:59 pm • 2 0 • view
The ordinances for these districts are just wild. Nominally "the Director" of Finance and Administrative Services administers the programs but it's just "DFAS receives money and does collections and then mails a check to the private 'program administrator'". There's an advisory board, of course.
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bsky.app/profile/sher...
sep 1, 2025, 6:20 pm • 1 0 • view
Very interesting.
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