How retail, hotel, and food and beverage taxes can spur economic development

Phone/web seminar

February 25, 2008

10:00 am to 11:00 am

We have invited small town and county representatives to discuss how retail, hotel, and food and beverage taxes have been put to use in their communities. We’ll have about 4-8 panelists, and I’ll try to field questions from the people on the call. Elizabeth Read, Executive Director of the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough (NC) will tell us about Hillsborough’s 1% meals and beverage tax that goes to Hillsborough’s Tourism Board. Laurie Paolicelli, Executive Director of the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau Orange County (NC) will tell us how hotel taxes go toward tourism in her neck of the woods. We also hope to discuss how retail sales taxes can be linked to a buy local campaign.

 We want to thank Carol Wiersma of the Mississippi Valley Partnership (http://www.mississippi-river.org/) for being our guest for Smallwander.com’s first seminar, “Creating Travel Partnerships.” The phone/web conference was held yesterday, January 28, at 10 a.m. Please stay tuned for upcoming seminars on small town tourism topics. We’ll also be posting the audio file from the conference as podcast.