Holidaymakers in England might be subject to a further charge on top of hotel and accommodation prices. Plans for an Overnight Visitor Levy are to go ahead with proposals to enable mayors and strategic authorities in England to impose local tourist tax to add on the price of holidays and business/weekend breaks.
Per the government, the levy is to provide local councils with an additional stream of finance to support investment in transport, infrastructure, and the visitor economy.
Still, the hotel groups have cautioned that the extra fee might cause a higher cost of holidays, putting increased pressure on hotels, guesthouses and short-term lets. What is the new visitor levy?
The recommended tax would be levied on overnight guests in paid accommodation facilities. This could include hotels, as well as guest and bed-and-breakfasts guesthouses holiday lets and Airbnb accommodation.
Crucially, this would not necessarily have to be a single rate across the country.
Local leaders have also been given powers to choose whether or not to introduce a levy locally, and to determine what it would involve; exactly how this will work has not yet been finalized and rates and the finer details would be locally determined.
The latest government announcements suggest the powers will be available to English mayors and strategic authorities in March 2008, meaning visitors will in time face different charges given their destination. Why are we going to have to pay to holiday in England?
The government say that places visited by millions often get a free ride with their local community having to fund all of the services that such tourism demands.
Over 130 million overnight stays take place in England every year. A tourism visitor levy would mean the destination could collect a little extra income from tourism and reinvest it into the destinations people visit.
This funding might be allocated to public transport, local infrastructure, cultural amenities, to help support tourism or to enhance visitor sites. The broader aim is to allow the mayors to have more control over finances, and that this is invested back into the local economy.
The concept is not new to major tourism centres in the world; a visitor/hotel tax is present in all major cities across Europe and North America, and now the Scottish authorities are about to grant powers to local councils to charge visitors an “overnight levy”.
Edinburgh is already well in progress in introducing the visitor charge.
Not everyone believes the policy is a good thing for English tourism. UKHospitality has heavily condemned the idea arguing that an uncapped levy may make accommodation more expensive for tourists, whilst simultaneously posing extra paperwork for the hospitality sector.
UKHospitality has put forward a study based on economic modeling that, under a 5% levy, jobs could eventually become threatened for tens of thousands and the economy’s output may be depleted.
