Identification of Distorted Official Hospitality Statistics’ and Their Impact on DMOs’ Funding’s Sustainability: Case Notes from Slovakia

Csaba Sidor,Branislav Kršák,Ľubomír Štrba

doi:10.3390/su11041084

Csaba Sidor, Branislav Kršák + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11041084

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 19, 2019
Citations: 3	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Technical University of Košice

Abstract

Analyzing the usability of open machine-readable registries in the context of minimizing gaps for local occupancy tax evasions in the example of Slovakia is the main purpose of this paper. The concept uses the Registry of Financial Statements’ and Registry of Legal Entities’ application programming interfaces (APIs) for extracting public data on companies’ and entrepreneurs’ business nature, in accordance with Eurostat’s Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) and United Nations’ International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC) at the level of entities’ registered address. The resulted data sets are compared with open official data that is available at the municipality level (LAU2), as gathered by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic’s monthly surveys and municipalities’ annual accounts. The comparison’s outcomes indicate the deviations between the official and the possible numbers of entities with occupancy tax obligations, as well as tax revenues. The results conclude with how the incorporation of used open APIs in official processes may be beneficial for public and state institutions in the matter of potential local tax evasions, as well as for state regulated public-private partnership destination management organizations. The notes also discuss solutions for the minimization of data and the industry’s official impact distortion.

Highlights

The European Commission identifies occupancy tax, as one of the number of taxes that are primarily focused on the tourism sector, mostly charged on a per person, per night basis, or as a percentage of room rates, and apart from Malta, the tax itself is levied at the local government level [1].The question of occupancy taxes necessity was raised already in the early 90s
Companies are not obligated to register their places of operation, only their seat and organizational sections must be registered within the Slovak Business registry
Since there is no official methodology or system for municipalities as to how to effectively identify potential ASPs in bulk, and SUSR does not have the capacities to check every legal entity on site, the deviations may be caused by ASPs ignorance towards SUSR’s monthly survey

Summary

Introduction

The European Commission identifies occupancy tax, as one of the number of taxes that are primarily focused on the tourism sector, mostly charged on a per person, per night basis, or as a percentage of room rates, and apart from Malta, the tax itself is levied at the local government level [1].The question of occupancy taxes necessity was raised already in the early 90s. Lee and Ki, via spatial panel estimation of random effects, identified that accommodation service providers that are competing for similar demand without the obligation of occupancy tax are they likely to have an advantage over providers with occupancy tax obligation [3]. Lee and Ki acknowledge that the effective use of occupancy tax for tourism promotion may outweigh the disadvantage that arises from higher customer prices [3]. Kljunickov et al raise awareness regarding the misuse of AirBnB’s concept of shared economy by accommodation service providers from the perspective of tax evasions and negative impacts on price of local housing and local hospitality industry [5]. The necessity of reliable, precise governmental and public open data has been demonstrated for use in the spatial modelling of environmental risks, modelling of administrative procedures, and in partial tourism industries [12]

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