It’s mad that we don’t already charge a nominal amount for a tourist visa, especially when the Americans charge £20 for a “visa waiver”. People flying from America (5.1m in 2023) wouldn’t miss an extra $/£20 on top of everything else they pay.
Stick a £1 per person per room per night on hotel stays and that’s basically free money.
It is an enormous dick move to charge tourist tax, but given everyone else is doing it and has been for so long, London is under no obligation to look gift horses in mouths.
FINALLY!
The easiest thing to do. HUNDREDS of other cities have this.
£3 a night per hotel room = massive amounts of funding for services tourists and locals use.
>>UKHospitality, a trade body representing the sector, said additional taxes would be “extremely damaging”.
Absolute f*cking nonsense
I really dislike this “nickel and diming” . Tourists are already paying VAT on hotels plus the airport departure taxes. And they will be paying VAT on nearly all of the spending they do while here.
Charge it on Airbnbs, not hotels.
Then confiscate the properties of anyone Airbnb their property without registering and paying the tax.
Fully on board with this. Always thought it was odd we didn’t when so many countries do.
Cos london hotels aren’t already stupidly expensive eh
Ban AirBNBs in London please.
Charge for the museums also. They can barely afford to keep going. There’s a huge source of income sitting unclaimed and all the world gets a free day out at our expense. Fucking crazy.
They aren’t coming because they don’t get vat discount on luxury goods!
The number of comments saying “it’s already expensive as it is”, not understanding basic economics, is truly saddening but not that shocking when you consider literacy and numeracy rates in this country are abysmal.
Ah yes, other fees, making London impossible to live in or visit, again
Used correctly it can be a good thing, I think. We would need to make sure it doesn’t go to councils as general allocation money.
Fund things like more public toilets, water refilling stations, even a police officer or two in places heavily used by visitors and tourists.
How about a tax on shoplifting and illegal electric motorbikes?
City tax makes sense for tourists, like so many other European cities.
I thought for building a public toilet
I live in London would I still have to pay it?
As a tourist I would happily pay up to £10 a night as tourist tax when visiting London.
Blew my mind when I found out that we don’t already do this. It’s the easiest quick win for additional funding.
Completely commonplace in Europe. Usually around a fiver a night. Not exactly a devastating expense.
My company literally just paid £250 for me to stay a night in London, in a fucking Travelodge. What is an extra £3 gonna do to their competitiveness? Boo hoo
I was curious so ran the figures. London has roughly 140,000 hotel rooms at an occupancy rate of 80% – 112,000
If we charge £3/day you get £122,640,000 in revenue. With the average price of a hotel room being about £235, it’s likely that a near 1% tax isn’t going to make a difference to demand.
Putting that money back into our community would be incredibly valuable. It’s a no brainer really. I’d like to see the revenue raised ringfenced — someone else raised good points, public toilets, water fountains, street cleaning, bins, community events and displays etc – tangible benefits that we can see. We’ve had too much visible decline
Can we make it higher?
Surprised not to see Amsterdam mentioned with a nice tourist tax of 12%.
A few quid is understandable, you see that in Europe, even in very small villages it’s a euro or two.
Can there be ANY distinction for the amount of freelance workers that work within London and depend on AirBnb or Hotels to work there?
Is there anything left that is not taxed?
Travelling to the UK has always been very expensive. But lately it’s so much more hasle and with the inflation it’s even more expensive.
Since you left the EU I thought I might still make it worth it by buying some expensive electronics (computer, …) and not have to pay the VAT. But the UK government dropped that advantage for foreigners.
It’s a lot more hassle to come, it’s more expensive than ever and the government is trying every way it can to milk the tourists even more.
All that’s left for the rest of Europe is to wait for a financial crisis like the Greek one happening in the UK. That definitely made holidays to Greece a lot cheaper.
Well, it’s frustrating for potential EU tourists.
Yes. Not specifically hotels too. It should be any accommodation for tourists. So airbnb pays its share. Airbnb hosts should also have a tourist license.
The cynical part of me: this will go into a long consultation process, members in gov would be heavily lobbied by donors and ‘gifted’ by hotel corporations. 3-4 years later all fizzled out and put in the back. Rinse and repeat.
I would only point out that the UK charges VAT on hotel rooms and a lot of countries don’t. That’s a big chunk of change going to the government.
And if you do this you have to do it to Airbnb as well or it will drive things further that way which is worse for everyone.
30 comments
It’s already so expensive 😅
It’s mad that we don’t already charge a nominal amount for a tourist visa, especially when the Americans charge £20 for a “visa waiver”. People flying from America (5.1m in 2023) wouldn’t miss an extra $/£20 on top of everything else they pay.
Stick a £1 per person per room per night on hotel stays and that’s basically free money.
It is an enormous dick move to charge tourist tax, but given everyone else is doing it and has been for so long, London is under no obligation to look gift horses in mouths.
FINALLY!
The easiest thing to do. HUNDREDS of other cities have this.
£3 a night per hotel room = massive amounts of funding for services tourists and locals use.
>>UKHospitality, a trade body representing the sector, said additional taxes would be “extremely damaging”.
Absolute f*cking nonsense
I really dislike this “nickel and diming” . Tourists are already paying VAT on hotels plus the airport departure taxes. And they will be paying VAT on nearly all of the spending they do while here.
Charge it on Airbnbs, not hotels.
Then confiscate the properties of anyone Airbnb their property without registering and paying the tax.
Fully on board with this. Always thought it was odd we didn’t when so many countries do.
Cos london hotels aren’t already stupidly expensive eh
Ban AirBNBs in London please.
Charge for the museums also. They can barely afford to keep going. There’s a huge source of income sitting unclaimed and all the world gets a free day out at our expense. Fucking crazy.
They aren’t coming because they don’t get vat discount on luxury goods!
The number of comments saying “it’s already expensive as it is”, not understanding basic economics, is truly saddening but not that shocking when you consider literacy and numeracy rates in this country are abysmal.
Ah yes, other fees, making London impossible to live in or visit, again
Used correctly it can be a good thing, I think. We would need to make sure it doesn’t go to councils as general allocation money.
Fund things like more public toilets, water refilling stations, even a police officer or two in places heavily used by visitors and tourists.
How about a tax on shoplifting and illegal electric motorbikes?
City tax makes sense for tourists, like so many other European cities.
I thought for building a public toilet
I live in London would I still have to pay it?
As a tourist I would happily pay up to £10 a night as tourist tax when visiting London.
Blew my mind when I found out that we don’t already do this. It’s the easiest quick win for additional funding.
Completely commonplace in Europe. Usually around a fiver a night. Not exactly a devastating expense.
My company literally just paid £250 for me to stay a night in London, in a fucking Travelodge. What is an extra £3 gonna do to their competitiveness? Boo hoo
I was curious so ran the figures. London has roughly 140,000 hotel rooms at an occupancy rate of 80% – 112,000
If we charge £3/day you get £122,640,000 in revenue. With the average price of a hotel room being about £235, it’s likely that a near 1% tax isn’t going to make a difference to demand.
Putting that money back into our community would be incredibly valuable. It’s a no brainer really. I’d like to see the revenue raised ringfenced — someone else raised good points, public toilets, water fountains, street cleaning, bins, community events and displays etc – tangible benefits that we can see. We’ve had too much visible decline
Can we make it higher?
Surprised not to see Amsterdam mentioned with a nice tourist tax of 12%.
A few quid is understandable, you see that in Europe, even in very small villages it’s a euro or two.
Can there be ANY distinction for the amount of freelance workers that work within London and depend on AirBnb or Hotels to work there?
Is there anything left that is not taxed?
Travelling to the UK has always been very expensive. But lately it’s so much more hasle and with the inflation it’s even more expensive.
Since you left the EU I thought I might still make it worth it by buying some expensive electronics (computer, …) and not have to pay the VAT. But the UK government dropped that advantage for foreigners.
It’s a lot more hassle to come, it’s more expensive than ever and the government is trying every way it can to milk the tourists even more.
All that’s left for the rest of Europe is to wait for a financial crisis like the Greek one happening in the UK. That definitely made holidays to Greece a lot cheaper.
Well, it’s frustrating for potential EU tourists.
Yes. Not specifically hotels too. It should be any accommodation for tourists. So airbnb pays its share. Airbnb hosts should also have a tourist license.
The cynical part of me: this will go into a long consultation process, members in gov would be heavily lobbied by donors and ‘gifted’ by hotel corporations. 3-4 years later all fizzled out and put in the back. Rinse and repeat.
I would only point out that the UK charges VAT on hotel rooms and a lot of countries don’t. That’s a big chunk of change going to the government.
And if you do this you have to do it to Airbnb as well or it will drive things further that way which is worse for everyone.
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