WESTERN Province has increased its hotel fees as part of amendments to its regulations recently.

Hotels with less than 10 room’s license fee used to be $6000.00 has moved up to $8000.00 dollars in Western Province.

The next category of hotels license fee that have more than 10 rooms which used to be $10,000.00 dollars has also moved up to $12,000.00.

These changes were done during the identified services stand part of the Western Province Business License Amendment 2017 regulation at the Full Assembly meeting last week in Gizo Town.

The Minister of Finance and Treasury and MPA for Ward 24 at North Vangunu Hon Lester Saomasi clarified to the Assembly that at first he did not want to touch on this area because of the understanding that the government of the province wants to promote tourism as well.

“In this instance, I have studied that we had already given these first amount of license fees to the hotels for about six to seven years now,” said the Minister of Finance and Treasury.

“So I think it is proper that $2000.00 dollars is the amount increased over the hotel license fees case,” he said.

Non-executive member and the MPA for Ward 18 Hon. George Solingi Lilo during the Assembly questioned the Minister of Finance and Treasury if raising hotel fees would be okay.

He said this is because from observation, major hotel’s such as the Gizo Hotel has never made any good profit in the province since day one.

“For the information of the chamber, they have never made any profit,” said Hon. George Solingi Lilo.

“Why they are not able to make profit could be from so many reasons but we need to find out more,” he said.

“I think the Ministry of Tourism would like to build a Hotel Investment Committee but my question only is will we be okay with raising hotel fees.

This is only a question and not to dispute the fact that we have raised the license because regulating it is important,” added the MPA for Ward 18 on his logic.