SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The NWT Association of Communities has voted in favour of lobbying the GNWT to legislate a territory-wide hotel levy to be used by individual municipalities to market their communities to potential visitors.

Larry Jacquard, director of sales for Yellowknife Inn, left, said a territory-wide one per cent hotel levy would help Yellowknife market itself as a convention destination. Working to Jacquard's left is supervisor Kelly Wilke. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

The levy, currently being pitched as a one per cent tax on all hotel customer invoices, will allow Yellowknife to tout itself as a convention destination capable of hosting between 100 to 350 delegates, according the Yellowknife Hotel Association.

All but one community voted in favour of promoting the levy, said Gord Van Tighem, mayor of Yellowknife and president of the association, which convened for its annual general meeting in Hay River from May 13-16.

Earlier this year, the Yk association - made up of the Explorer Hotel, Chateau Nova, Arnica Inn, Yellowknife Inn, Capital Suites, Super 8, Nova Court and Coast Fraser Tower - pitched the levy to Yellowknife city council, which forwarded its approval of the levy to the NWT Association of Communities.

According to the Yellowknife association, had the levy been in place in 2008, it would have generated $250,000; in 2009, $200,000.

"What we'd like to see is (the money) goes into a budget at the Northern Frontier Visitors Association," said Jenni Bruce, general manager of Chateau Nova and president of the Yk Hotel Association. "Those funds would be used to pay an employee to get a computer, pay for some marketing and send them to trade shows that target meeting planners."

While Yellowknife is slated to host conventions for both the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Wildlife Federation in the next two years, and both shows will attract hundreds of visitors to the city, the NWT capital is still far behind other cities, such as Whitehorse, when it comes to marketing itself as a convention host, said Larry Jacquard, director of sales for Yellowknife Inn.

The levy "is needed because right now we're not competing nationally or even internationally with other convention spots, such as the Yukon, which is very aggressive right now," said Jacquard. "They're just pulling everything that's going to the North."

Nationally, conventions pull in big business, according to a 2007-2008 Canadian economic impact study by Meeting Professionals International. In 2008, the country hosted 673,000 meetings, which in turn generated more than $14 billion in annual tax revenues for governments, in addition to thousands of jobs.

Sliding tourism numbers territory-wide also make this the right time for the levy, added Jacquard.

During the 2008-2009 fiscal year, the number of visitors to the NWT slipped to 73,419, a drop of seven per cent from the year before, according to the GNWT's department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.

During the same period, visitor spending dropped by $7.6 million.