Virtual Meeting to Weigh In about MAT in Frontenac

pted, in most cases, to market their tourism businesses by taxing their existing tourist base, through a Municipal Accommodation Tax, (MAT) which is levied only on people who pay for overnight accommodation at hotels and motels, resorts, and at air bnb’s (short term accommodations).

MAT is a tax that is approved by the Ontario government for tourism promotion, for jurisdictions that decide to implement it.

“The idea behind MAT is for tourism marketing and destination development to be funded from a source other than the residential and commercial tax base,” says Richard Allen, Manager of Economic Development for Frontenac County.

MAT is well established in Prince Edward County, Kingston, Brockville and Cornwall, and is being developed in Haliburton County, but less developed tourist markets in rural Eastern Ontario do not have the tax in place.

“Research in markets that MAT is in place, has not shown any appreciable resistance from visitors to book accommodation in providers who charge MAT. Essentially it is common enough that it is an accepted surcharge, usually about 4 to 5 per cent,” said Allen.

After presenting the idea of a MAT to Frontenac County Council early this year, Allen was given the go ahead to approach the local Frontenac townships with the idea, with a plan to explore the concept with the public, to determine if it is worth pursuing further, within each municipality.

Allen said that the administration necessary to collect and distribute the proceeds from MAT are high enough that at least 3 out of the 4 Frontenac townships would need to participate in order to make it viable.

Provincial regulations stipulate that half of the net proceeds from a MAT go to the local township as general revenue, and the other half is distributed to a third party, not-for-profit agency, to be spent on tourism promotion.

Since presenting the idea of MAT to the four townships, Allen has overseen a couple of open houses, and has talked to accommodation providers across the county to get their perspective. An ongoing conversation about the proposal is also being hosted on Engagefrontenac.ca. where a MAT project page is located under Frontenac County Projects.

There are a lot of questions surrounding how MAT works, and how it is administered that are captured on that project page.

One issue that would need to be addressed is how to implement MAT in short term rental accommodations.

“We do not have very many hotels or motels in Frontenac County, and a lot of the resorts are summer focused and have long standing customer bases keeping them thriving. The majority of overnight stays are in short term rentals,” said Allen, which are accessed through services like AirBnb and Vrbo.

“In order for MAT to be viable anywhere in Frontenac County, short term rentals would have to be included,” said Allen.

Short term rentals are not licensed in any of the Frontenac townships, nor are they registered or tracked in any of the four jurisdictions, and that would have to change in order to obtain tax revenue from visitors to short term rental lodging, in Frontenac County.

Before reporting back to Frontenac County Council early in 2026, Allen is looking forward to hearing from as many people as possible, and a prime opportunity for that is taking place this evening between 6:30pm and 8:30pm.

A virtual open house is scheduled at that time. Registration is available at engangefrontenac.ca/municipal-accomodation-tax-feasibility.

Allen said that the research phase that has been underway is aimed at determining if there is a good reason to move forward at all.

I don’t think we should move quickly, but carefully and intentionally if we move forward at all. And it might be that we end up saying, ‘let’s just press pause,” he said.

Frontenac County developed a destination development plan a few years ago, but implementation of the plan was halted in 2023, because of a lack of human resources in the two member economic development team at Frontenac County. With a third team member coming on stream, under a three year contract position, early in the new year, implementation of the destination development plan will resume.

It is still to be determined if implementation of a Municipal Accommodation Tax will be part of that implementation, or not.