tourist tax - what are we thinking?

[Misthios]

Vote yesterday to pass the tourist tax bill, people staying in Airbnbs, B&Bs, hotels will pay £1 per night per room (not per person).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8991dgg2wdo

I am in two minds about this. On one hand, this is something we are used to paying in other places, in Menorca last year we paid about 3 euros per person per night. Also some places are really struggling with the numbers of tourists - the devil's pulpit road near me on the way up to Drymen is routinely blocked by tourists, Skye is heaving, american Outlander fans are chipping bits off grave markers at Culloden.

On the other hand, £1 per room per night is not much money and it will be a pain in the neck for smaller B&B or self-catering owners to administer and pay. I also don't trust the current administration to use the funds properly, it will just go into the black hole of finances rather than be ring-fenced to increase facilities in areas which are deluged by visitors.

I support it, but wish it could some how be applied to the caravans/converted vans who come, don't stay in caravan sites and put very little into the local economy. But no idea how that would be workable.

Chicken and egg there
Ideally there would be many more "aire" style places to stay for vans - cheap rather than £30+ a night for overfull campsites

But to develop the aires you need the income from them and the tax

I don't think it's enough to limit / manage overcrowding but it might help raise some valuable cash

Article suggests it's a 1% levy, which makes more sense than a flat £1 per room per night, but it still seems pointlessly low.

I've been to places with a 10-15% levy and not even blinked at that, so I think they could easily push this to something a bit more meaningful without utterly eviscerating tourism, but I can see why they might want to be gentle with it at first.

Something needs done. NC500 is basically a slow-moving carpark, and CEC seems to have given up any pretence of doing anything for local residents in favour of running the city like some sort of Harry Potter themepark.

Definitely. Tourists will not notice it.

I am in a lot of "visit Scotland" facebook groups in connection with my work and part of the problem is that many tourists lack individuality and want to do the same as all the others. Edinburgh to Glencoe to Fort William to Skye to Inverness to Edinburgh. Perhaps a day trip to Stirling/St Andrews. Scottish Borders, Perth, entire coast from Inverness round to Dundee, Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire - not a look in. So you have some places which are deluged to the point of not coping like Skye or the North Coast 500, and other places which are entirely bypassed.

Not sure what can be done to change that, tbh, and nobody wants to see a motorway built through Glencoe.

I think that the tax should be higher where it is removing housing stock to the benefit of tourists as there is a huge housing crisis in some of these areas.

Will it apply to business travellers? The article didn't make this clear.

I would imagine it applies to anyone booking a hotel room, B&B etc, whatever the reason for that stay.

Any cash raised won't go to the "current administration " @Misthios
it will be for local councils to decide if they want to set a visitor levy and if they do the money will go the council
any cash raised will have to be spent in a way that would benefit tourists/the tourism sector. Do that could be things like improving facilities, such as a lack of parking in an area popular with visitors, or promoting an area, or even housing, if a lack of homes is making it difficult for the hospitality sector to attract workers

I think tourism taxes are essential in this day and age.

I think it’s fine. Fyi where I live it’s now €2.30 per person per night (over 16 years). So a family of 4 with two children would pay €4.60 a day. We run a holiday rental, and nobody blinks at it. It’s been very normal to pay tourist tax here for probably 30+ years. A €30-40 extra per week doesn’t really bother anyone, and it does make a difference to local town that is affected by tourists. We take money from tourists, local town council auto takes form us. We have to register every guest staying anyway so it’s all automatic and no extra work

and yes, apples to anyone booking a room or self catering accommodation, and also applies to caravan parks and camp sites.
Although there will be exemptions for children and those in receipt of disability benefits

Remember when shops had to stay charging for plaggy bags. We were told the money would be gathered and put to good use. Yeah. I see this going the same way with smaller business

I'd say it was a good idea. I'd like it applied to those big bloody cruise lines too, although of course they're not booking rooms so it'd be a different tax. They turn up at Hound Point, vomit out 2000 visitors who are tendered to South Queensferry before they jump onto transport into Edinburgh. They spend nothing. Not in the communities that have to find a way to live life whilst being hemmed in by buses. There's 3 ships all coming in on 17th June, according to an article I read. 3 of them.

Likewise, Culross is absolutely hideous at times with the Rabbies buses jamming the streets so people can pretend they're in Outlander. At least they actually spend a little cash, even if its just an ice cream....

it will be for local councils to decide if they want to set a visitor levy and if they do the money will go the council

I don't think that level of detail has been decided though, has it? Whether it's going to be council specific? Our local council is pretty shite too though, to be fair.

it has @Misthios - the legislation gives councils the power to introduce a visitor levy if they wish to do so
so probably not all councils will do - but some like Edinburgh definitely will
before they can introduce a charge they have to do a local consultation, and there's an 18 month period before any charge can be imposed

I'm totally for it in theory but I want to see the receipts.

And actually I'm in two minds (I live in Edinburgh) about what it should be used for, I flip between things like schools, libraries and housing and thinking it should be spent on the things that tourists impact like roads, culture, rubbish, infrastructure.

I would actually be quite happy if it paid for a 24 hour security guard to stop tourists rubbing poor wee Greyfriars Bobby's nose off. Or as OP said, to stop Outlander fans chipping away at grave markers!

Sounds like you've got far worse problems than the poor residents of Weymouth, who have recently been lumbered with a massive influx of liners. https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/24327138.rodwell-residents-protest-cruise-ship-drop-off/

Maybe councils should be given the authority to levy tourist taxes in the way that works for them. So if it’s cruise ship coaches or rabbies buses that are the issue they can levy charges / fees.

I don’t disagree with tourist tax in principle. That said I tend to camp. It’s £4.20 a night for a tent for wild camping, there is a bin and a campfire spot. Id be miffed if tourist tax was more than nightly cost!

... american Outlander fans are chipping bits off grave markers at Culloden.

Any source for this? Thanks.

Where we live it’s used by local
council to fix things impacted by tourists or add new things.

For example our town population is around 3000. In summer overnight population with tourists rises to around 30,000. It means tourists use things like the roads, parking, playgrounds, which are then needed to be fixed far more frequently than if just locals and through people used it.
Last week a public water refil station and bike station for charging e bikes, fixing them, pump were all added to try and encourage bike use v car, and less single use bottles used. It was paid 50% by tourist tax 50% our local taxes. So everyone benefits. The hiking trail stairs and handrail also being fixed at the moment.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands-islands/3296143/work-to-protect-historic-gravestone-at-culloden-from-mass-of-outlander-fans-carried-out/

I am on several groups for americans wishing to visit Scotland and although the vast majority are well able to differentiate between fact and fiction, there are some who are so obsessed with Outlander that they want mementos. They don't "get" that in essence Culloden is a mass grave site. One particularly unhinged posters had actually drawn up her family tree showing she was directly descended from Jamie and Claire.

Outlander has been brilliant for making Scotland a must-see destination again but it's definitely a double-edged sword which has Disneyfied parts of Scotland. Maybe they wouldn't be so keen if they knew lots of it was filmed in that big studio just off the M80 in Cumbernauld.

Thanks, Misthios.

It seems strange because within the US people are (in general) pretty conscious of respecting local (Civil War, Revolutionary War) war graves in a similar way, I think, as people are in the UK. I can see someone watching the series and thinking it's fiction, but by the time anyone actually makes their way to Culloden - which is after all a little bit out of the way, so you'd think people who go would have a particular interest - I'd have hoped they'd have figured it out.

Outlander is such a massive show over there, it’s never caught on here in the same way. Quite worrying that people can’t distinguish between fact and fiction but who am I to talk, I took my DD to see the “friend’s apartment “ in New York and it wasn’t even filmed there!!

I'd actually apply it unevenly.

So £1 for hotel room and £5 for private air b and b and apartments etc.

Partly because a hotel will have 100's of rooms so they provide more tourist tax but also to help support the use of hotels rather than prices being driven up by second homes that are made into air b and bs.