OCEAN CITY — After carefully reviewing and debating the options on the table, resort officials this week approved a gradual scaling up of the percentage of the town’s room tax dedicated to marketing.
In October, the Mayor and Council got an historic overview of the town’s room tax and how the revenue generated was distributed to the advertising and marketing budget and the general fund. As part two of that discussion during Tuesday’s work session, the elected officials were presented with three options on what to do with the room tax rate going forward in out years.
The first option was simply leaving the room tax rate dedicated to marketing at its current level of 2% for fiscal years 2022 and 2023. The second and preferred option was keeping the rate at 2% for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, scaling it up to 2.1% in fiscal year 2024 and again to 2.2% in fiscal year 2025. A third option, which did not get much traction, was raising rate to 2.6 %.
After considerable debate, the council ultimately voted on the second option.
While most agreed it was now time to increase the percentage again going forward in future fiscal years, there was still the issue of how best to distribute the anticipated increase in revenue. Earlier this year, the town hired new Tourism and Business Development Director Tom Perlozzo to overhaul the tourism departments under one umbrella and begin developing strategies on how best to market the town and all it has to offer.