Bournemouth hoteliers should welcome a tourist tax – it might even help them
Bournemouth hoteliers are up in arms about a suggested £2.40 tourist tax, claiming that it could put people off visiting the town. But history suggests footfall could, in fact, improve after a levy is introduced.
Many destinations charge tourist taxes, often in the form of a nominal nightly fee added to a hotel bill. It is also common for tourists to be charged to enter or exit a country in addition to visa fees, as is the case in Bali and New Zealand.
Tourist taxes are rarely introduced to deter visitors, although more overcrowded destinations might see this as a happy byproduct of the scheme. Rather, the charges are usually designed to raise funds to counter the ill effects of tourism, and are often pumped into improving infrastructure and public services or to fund environmental conservation.
In some destinations, a tourist tax has been introduced to proactively increase visitor numbers: in Manchester, a £1 visitor levy was introduced in 2023 to improve the marketing of the destination, and Bournemouth councillors have also promised to reinvest the funds into marketing the town as a tourist destination, and funding events such as the local air show.
They may be onto something. Telegraph research finds that in nearly all cases, the introduction of a visitor levy has coincided with a significant increase in tourist numbers. Clearly there is no causality here (nobody actively seeks out a destination with a tourist tax), but at the very least it indicates that tourist taxes, usually introduced when visitor numbers are on an upwards trajectory, don’t deter arrivals in a meaningful way. Let’s look at a few case studies.
Bhutan
Tourist tax: $100 per day (£76)
Introduced: 1991
Change in visitors: 10,988 per cent increase (1992 to 2019)
Bhutan has one of the highest tourist taxes in the world. Its sustainable development fee, introduced in 1991 at $65 (£49) per day, rose to $200 (£152) per day in 2022, but after the pandemic the government reduced it to $100 (£76) per day in a bid to encourage more visitors. For a long time the fee was part of a larger sum which covered daily transport, accommodation and food, but now those elements are covered separately. Since opening to the world in 1974, Bhutan has made it a priority to sidestep the ills of mass tourism, but the daily fee has not stopped the incremental growth of visitors. Arrival numbers increased from 2,850 per year in 1992 to 316,000 per year in 2019, with the majority of visitors coming from India.
New Zealand
Entry fee: 100 New Zealand dollars (£47)
Introduced: 2019
Change in visitors: 24 per cent decrease (2019–2023)
New Zealand’s entry fee (officially, the international visitor conservation and tourism levy) was introduced in 2019 at NZ$35 (£16.50) and was recently almost tripled to NZ$100 (£47). The government says the funds will be used to preserve the country’s popular tourist sites and natural landscape of fjords, mountains and lakes. It is hard to assess whether the levy has had an impact on tourist numbers, because soon after its introduction New Zealand went into one of the world’s longest Covid lockdowns, only reopening to international visitors in August 2022. Arrivals hit three million in 2023, down from 3.8 million in 2019, and some tourism industry workers fear that the £47 entry fee will slow the country’s recovery.
Italy
Tourist tax: Between €1 and €5 per night (£0.85 and £4.20)
Introduced: 2011
Change in visitors: 30.2 per cent increase (2010–2019)
Italy’s tourist tax varies from region to region, but broadly speaking you can expect to be charged a few euros per night if you’re staying in a tourist destination such as Rome, Venice, Milan or Florence, depending on the time of year and your type of accommodation. Recently, there have been reports that Italy could increase its tax on visitors to as much as €25 (£21) per night, although that would be for the top-end hotels; the majority of hotels (those priced between €100 and €400) would come with a charge of €10 (£8.43) per night. Looking at the annual visitor statistics, tourism in Italy grew faster in the 10 years after the introduction of a tourist tax (2011) than the previous 10 years.
Amsterdam
Tourist tax: 12.5 per cent of room rate
Introduced: 1974
Change in visitors: Data unavailable
Amsterdam introduced an accommodation fee in 1974, and today the city has one of the steepest tourist taxes in Europe. In January 2024, the 7 per cent tourist tax increased to 12.5 per cent of the room rate (for a £200 per night room, you’ll hand over an extra £25 to the local government). The funds go towards cleaning the city streets and maintaining vital infrastructure such as bridges and canals. While there is no consistent visitor data for 1974, we can see overall visits to the Netherlands more than tripled between 1995 and 2019.
Galapagos Islands
Entry fee: $200 per day in high season (£152)
Introduced: 1993
Change in visitors: 412 per cent increase (1990s to 2010s)
The Galapagos Islands authorities have charged an entry fee for decades now, with the bulk of the funds trickling down to the national park, paying the salaries of park rangers and helping with conservation efforts. In August 2024 the fee doubled from $100 (£76) to $200 (£152) for international visitors, the first increase of the park fee since 1998. The introduction of an entry fee has done little to reduce interest in the archipelago. The Galapagos Conservation Trust says: “Around 270,000 people visit the Galapagos Islands each year and this number is steadily increasing.”
