As most of our members are probably aware, The Town of the Blue Mountains introduced a Municipal Accommodation Tax (MAT) in 2025. This followed similar action taken by a number of other Ontario municipalities in tourist regions. The source of the MAT revenues is a 4% charge levied on all overnight stays by visitors to our Town.
MAT presents a wonderful opportunity for the Town to both support our tourism sector, one of our primary economic drivers, and also help to address impacts from high levels of tourism on our residents and community. It is projected to raise approximately $3-4 million annually. The 2025 MAT collection consists of 50% allocated to TBM, and approximately 7% to a Destination Marketing Organization representing businesses across the Town for marketing.
Both are entirely new revenue streams. The remaining 43% is a transfer from TBM to Blue Mountain Village Association, which replaces BMVA’s private funding for existing Village tourism operations and marketing, as required by provincial legislation
Tourism marketing initiatives will support our community destination strategy and encourage overnight stays and more shoulder season visits. Guidelines for use of these funds have been identified in the Town’s Destination Strategy. The remaining 50% is available for the Town to spend on tourism related initiatives and support community sustainability.
The funds should not be assigned to general revenue, but instead be focused on projects related to tourism, with annual reporting on the spend. Determining the optimal allocation of the Town’s portion has proven to be a somewhat challenging issue in our community. The question essentially boils down to a debate regarding
how the funding should be split between supporting our service businesses, and dealing with tourism’s impacts – both are laudable objectives.
It is unfortunate that our financial windfall should be the source of friction, and this reinforces the need to move forward in establishing a Destination Advisory Committee (DAC), comprised of representatives of both businesses and residents. The DAC will be the appropriate forum for debating the most appropriate uses for the funds consistent with the Town’s strategic goals, and arriving at a balanced approach that best satisfies the various stakeholders. The Town is just now launching the process to source DAC members, and this must be implemented with some urgency.
There are obvious opportunities to invest funding to support community residents while also benefiting the tourist sector. One could entail infrastructure spending, potentially including road capacity and safety, walking trails, parking, and water system capacity. The challenge in maintaining our critical infrastructure was evidenced by Council’s decision to allocate 2026 budget funding to our Asset Management Reserves.
High levels of tourist activity obviously contribute to infrastructure depreciation. The funds allocation model should recognize the significant proportion of tourism’s impact realized in Craigleith.
Another community and industry “win-win” investment area we believe would be workforce housing. Our Town has a severe shortage of rental housing that service workers can access. This presents significant staffing challenges for local businesses which compromises their ability to grow and prosper, and makes it more difficult for younger Town residents to continue to live and work here. Allocating MAT funding to support affordable workforce housing should be a priority.
The BMRA requests that Council ensures community perspectives and priorities are clearly and formally incorporated into MAT allocation decisions, which will be critical to building public support for the program.
