Last time you visited friends for dinner, did you take a bottle (wine or olive oil)? When you go to stay with pals, do you ask what you can bring, maybe treat them to lunch if it’s a longer stay? If, heaven forfend, you damage something while you’re there, do you make a point of replacing it? (That’s whether you smash a plate or, like my dad when we went to visit the parents of the woman I was au pairing for in the south of France, you jump so enthusiastically on their diving board it snaps in two.) I’m hoping that your answers have been “yes”, because those are the answers of the good guest.
As tourists we are guests in other people’s homes — if not their actual living rooms then their beaches, their high streets, their parks. We use their roads and their public loos. Of course it’s our responsibility to treat their homes with respect. But it’s also good manners to contribute, especially if so many of us visit so frequently it puts a strain on our hosts’ finances.
Tourist taxes mean hosts don’t have to wait for a contribution. They’re nothing new: Venice was charging overnight guests up to €5 long before the day-trip ticket was introduced; the Balearics began adding a euro or two to hotel bills more than 20 years ago. Now Wales is the latest place to moot the introduction of a tourist tax. If the bill introduced last Monday [Nov 25] is passed, it could mean that, from 2027, visitors each pay up to £1.25 per night — a small individual amount added painlessly to hotel bills that will potentially generate £33 million annually across the country. In Scotland, where a similar bill was introduced 18 months ago, Edinburgh and Highland councils have proposed a 5 per cent levy on overnight accommodation, to help fund improvements to infrastructure and the tourist experience.
Venice has been charging tourists for years
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No one wants to be treated as a cash cow, sure — and Amsterdam’s 12.5 per cent accommodation levy seems quite steep by comparison, if not steep enough to damp down the overtourism — but when the money is being reinvested to benefit locals and visitors these taxes are to be welcomed. Though not by the Wales Tourism Alliance (WTA), which represents more than 6,000 tourism businesses and says the levy will make Wales more expensive “without any perceived added value for our visitors”. In introducing the Welsh bill, the finance secretary, Mark Drakeford, said: “Many countries have seen real benefits from the reinvestment of visitor levy funds. We believe such success can be replicated in Wales.” But the WTA remains “disappointed that there is no clear commitment that the funding raised … will be dedicated to improving the visitor experience”.
The responsible tourism expert Harold Goodwin welcomes the levy but says such tourism-focused ring-fencing is impractical and unnecessary. “Councils are already bearing the cost for things like picking up litter and repairing footpaths — the levy would cover that.” He quotes the former chair of BA, Sir Colin Marshall, describing tourism as “the renting out for short-term lets of other people’s environments”. The problem, says Goodwin, is that “the rent goes to businesses while the costs are borne by the public purse”. A tourist tax helps replenish that purse.
• Tourist taxes: all the destinations where you have to pay to enter
Critics who fear the levy would act as a deterrent may have read the Welsh government’s 2022 evidence review of “elastigion sy’n berthnasol i ardoll ymwelwyr yng Nghymru”, which translates as “elasticities relevant to a visitor levy in Wales”, which translates as “would demand drop if prices went up?”. Its heavily caveated findings suggest it might — but by less than 1 per cent for every 1 per cent rise in accommodation prices.
Wales is considering adding a tax on overnight accommodation
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I’d be surprised if it even made that much difference. Come on — the levy on a week’s stay would be £8.75, less than you’d spend on a bottle for your mates. You’re more likely to be put off by traffic jams in Welsh country lanes. It’s hardly on a level with the rate in Bhutan, which was set post-Covid at £158pp per day — but was then halved when the deterrent proved too effective and tourism fell off a (scenic, temple-adorned) cliff. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in New Zealand, which on October 1 raised its international visitor charge from £16 to £47 “to address challenges in the tourism and conservation systems”. (That’d get you a very nice magnum of Marlborough sauvignon blanc.)
The fact is, levies like those proposed in Wales and Scotland are both negligible and reasonable — as onerous as wiping your shoes on arrival. The better guests we are, the better our hosts will be. They might even laugh off a broken diving board.
How do you feel about tourist taxes? Let us know in the comments below
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