Year-to-date, transient room tax, or TRT, revenue is down roughly 2% compared with 2024. But in June, which marks the unofficial start of summer tourism season in Park City, the drop was over 21%.
“June is really like a good indication of what the rest of summer might look like,” Park City Municipal Senior Analyst Robbie Smoot said.
Transient room taxes are imposed on rentals for stays less than 30 days.
“We have seen a little bit of a slide in the nightly rentals — so like the Airbnbs and VRBOs — those types of rentals, that we have not seen in just sort of the regular hotel revenues,” Smoot said. “That’s something I know the [Park City Chamber] is paying attention to and we’re looking at.”
Park City Councilmember Jeremy Rubell expressed concern about the figures at the council’s meeting Sept. 4.
“We budget and forecast pretty conservatively, which is great,” Rubell said. “This was probably the first report where it stuck out that we weren’t exceeding our forecasts by a pretty large margin, as kind of an indicator here that there’s something to see… Actions have reactions and this is telling us something.”
Rubell said it’s important for the council to avoid actions that could put Park City in “jeopardy financially.”
Councilmember Bill Ciraco echoed the sentiment.
“I want to make sure that we’re very careful about how we think about spending money, and make sure that we don’t put ourselves in a situation that we’ll regret,” Ciraco said. “With the competitive threat coming on the other side of the hill, with Deer Valley East Village, we do need to keep an eye on making sure that we protect our tax base.”
Despite the decline in lodging taxes, sales tax returns in June were up 10% year-over-year.
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