{"id":543932,"date":"2025-11-02T10:02:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T10:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/543932\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T10:02:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T10:02:16","slug":"could-spectacularly-beautiful-uk-area-the-orkney-islands-soon-introduce-a-5-entry-fee-for-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/543932\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Spectacularly Beautiful UK Area the Orkney Islands Soon Introduce A \u00a35 Entry Fee For Tourists?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few years many UK destinations have introduced measures to help cope with overtourism, from\u00a0tourist taxes in\u00a0Edinburgh<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Manchester<\/a>, to\u00a0some places even\u00a0banning holiday lets<\/a>. Soon, the islands of Orkney could introduce a \u00a35 visitors\u2019 entry fee to help mitigate overcrowding in the remote Scottish<\/a> location.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The archipelago is Britain\u2019s most visited spot for cruise ships, as thousands of tourists from Germany, Italy, America and England visit every year to see its rugged beauty, neolithic sites and\u00a0medieval cathedral. It\u2019s thought that Orkney hosts\u00a0around 450,000 visitors a year, 20 times the local population of 22,000. However, the small and remote islands don\u2019t have the infrastructure to cope with the volume of tourists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now local authorities are calling on the Scottish government to introduce a visitors\u2019 entrance levy to the isles.\u00a0Orkney Islands Council\u00a0and\u00a0Shetland and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles council) have asked the government to create new legislation that would see the fee added to cruise, ferry and plane fares to the archipelago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The
\nPhotograph: Shutterstock <\/p>\n

Martin Fleet, chair of Destination Orkney, calculated that a flat rate \u00a35 charge for every visitor could raise around \u00a32 million a year, which could go towards building new toilets, coach parks and paths for tourists to use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles, which have small population numbers, have incredible sites which people want to come and see, but we\u2019ve got to make sure that we protect those assets for future generations who live here and also those that want to visit,\u2019 Fleet told the Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018We don\u2019t want people to stop visiting here. We just need to be very mindful about how it\u2019s managed.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Scottish government confirmed it\u00a0was considering a point of entry levy as part of a wider consultation on introducing a tax\u00a0specifically for cruise ships, which local authorities would be able to\u00a0put towards improving tourism infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most over-touristed places in the UK, according to Reddit<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u2018most picturesque\u2019 scenic rail line in Britain has reopened after a \u00a31.4 million upgrade<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stay in the loop: sign up to our\u00a0free Time Out UK newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for the latest UK news and the best stuff happening across the country.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past few years many UK destinations have introduced measures to help cope with overtourism, from\u00a0tourist taxes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,11648,393,4884,11649,1144,712,183,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-543932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-categories-travel","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-news-transport-travel","14":"tag-northern-ireland","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-travel","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115479533642789451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}