{"id":5919,"date":"2012-03-22T07:27:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T07:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=5919"},"modified":"2012-03-22T07:27:30","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T07:27:30","slug":"proposed-15-environmental-tourism-fee-on-hotel-condominium-occupants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/proposed-15-environmental-tourism-fee-on-hotel-condominium-occupants\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed $15 environmental, tourism fee on hotel, condominium occupants"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Haidee V. Eugenio<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p>House Speaker Eli Cabrera (R-Saipan) pre-filed a bill that would assess a $15 environmental and tourism promotional fee among tourists or \u201ctransient\u201d occupants of hotels, lodging houses, motels, resort motels, apartments, apartment hotels, condominiums, and similar facilities in the CNMI.<\/p>\n<p>The proposed $15 fee will be assessed only on transient occupants below 13 years old.<\/p>\n<p>Cabrera is set to introduce House Bill 17-290 during today&#8217;s session.<\/p>\n<p>The bill seeks to amend Public Law 17-58 or the Tourism Incentive Program which provides incentives to travel agencies bringing in more tourists to the CNMI and also charges passengers from non-U.S. destinations a new $15 travel promotion fee.<\/p>\n<p>Cabrera&#8217;s HB 17-290 seeks to amend that law signed on Nov. 4, even before the regulations to implement it have yet to be finalized.<\/p>\n<p>If Cabrera&#8217;s bill becomes law, the $15 will be assessed on transient occupants of hotels and similar facilities, mostly tourists, instead of assessing passengers from non-U.S. destinations.<\/p>\n<p>The speaker said funds derived from the $15 fee will be deposited into a revolving fund administered by the Department of Finance and remitted to the Marianas Visitors Authority.<\/p>\n<p>These funds will then be used to build, equip, improve and maintain projects, agencies and facilities promoting recreation and tourism.<\/p>\n<p>Under the bill, $200,000 shall be allocated each for Rota and Tinian for charter flight tourism incentives and promotional programs.<\/p>\n<p>The fee will be collected by the person who operates, owns or manages a hotel, lodging house and similar facilities. They are to remit the collected fee to Finance on or before the 20th of the succeeding month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Haidee V. Eugenio Reporter House Speaker Eli Cabrera (R-Saipan) pre-filed a bill that would&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}