Starting next year, travelers may have to pay higher prices to book hotels in Australia via overseas websites such as Expedia. Because the new budget requires these companies to pay GST., too.
Websites such as Booking.com,Trivago and Wotif expect to pay 10 percent of all hotel accommodation sales in Australia to government as GST in order to "compete on an equal footing" with local businesses from July 1, 2019.
One tourism expert thinks the extra costs will be passed on to customers.
Nathan Crawman (Nathan Cloutman), senior tourism analyst at IBIS World, said overseas companies were "likely to raise hotel prices", but it may not necessarily rise 10 percent.
"Australia has a culture of cheap hotels," Krauman said. Competition in the tourism industry, he said, could "limit the price increases for overseas companies," which need to compete with local booking sites such as Webjet and Stayz, as well as leasing models such as Airbnb.
It is understood that Airbnb will not be affected by the changes in the new budget, as it falls into the category of leases for different purposes in terms of GST, but it is likely that the authorities will pay more attention to Airbnb. during the implementation of the policy
Krauman also said foreign companies could "use their negotiating power to reach agreements with hotels and airlines."
"they do have strength in this industry," he said.
(Accommodation Association of Australia), the Australian accommodation association, said it was time for overseas companies to "pay".
"We welcome the first step taken by government to force overseas online travel agencies to pay their tax share in Australia," said Monroe (Richard Munro), the association's chief executive.
"the dominant online travel agencies account for almost 85 percent of Australia's online accommodation reservations, but they employ very few people in Australia and pay few taxes in Australia."
A spokesman for the Expedia Group told Australia-Guangzhou (ABC): "the Expedia Group complies with the tax laws of the countries in which we do business, and we will not comment further at this time."
Since 2005, overseas hotel reservation websites have been free of GST. But at that time the market was very small. However, the online booking market has grown dramatically over the past decade, with Australians increasingly booking local accommodation through overseas sellers.
Hotel occupancy rates in state capitals were high from January 2017 to January 2018, according to Deloitte (Deloitte Access Economics), and revenue per available room is expected to increase 3.1 percent by 2019.
(Sarah Chaabo), a freelance Sydney photographer and frequent traveller, says she likes to find a place on sites such as Trivago, whether she travels at home or abroad.
"but I'm not going to use one platform, because I believe they only show the rooms of paying partners." She said she always tries to support all Australian companies, but the cost of traveling in Australia "is already scary, and in other neighboring countries, you can get more services with the same budget."
"for example, for the same money, I can only stay in a motel in Kunzhou, but I can sleep in a villa every night in Bali."
In the end, however, Chabo says, she tends to choose the website with the lowest price. "I think so. If they all have to pay GST, it's still a level playing field. " She said.
The budget proposal must be supported by all states and territories before it takes effect next year.