FEATURE
FEATURE | BRISTOL TOURISM TAX
Is a tourist tax
as bad as it seems?
For the past decade cities around the UK such as London, Bath, Oxford and York have been
wrestling with the idea of introducing a tourism tax levied upon hoteliers. The most recent
city considering the idea is Bristol - with the former head of its hoteliers’ association saying
such a scheme would be harmful to business. LEWIS CATCHPOLE explores whether a
tourist tax would be as bad as it seems
“We are not even in the top five most of hotel room nights. Already a popular and the UK is trying to compete with that.
visited cities in the UK. If we are already concept introduced in European cities such We also have the highest air passenger
competing with Liverpool, Bath, Birmingham, as Paris, Barcelona and Rome, any move duty in the world and also the highest
Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff to see it introduced into the UK has so far rate of fuel duty in the world so it makes it
and we are the first to go with a tourism been met with heavy criticism. difficult for us to get business as a starting
tax it will be utter madness.” Such is the
“I think it comes down to a macro level.
point,” explains Payne.
“An additional bed tax will hit the city the
exasperated tone of Mark Payne, the former Our VAT level is already the highest tourism head of the Bristol Hoteliers Association. VAT rate in Europe and second highest hardest: we don’t have an arena, we don’t
in the world at 20%. You have places like have a Premiership football team so it is one
contemplating introducing a tourism tax Belgium, Germany that have 6-7%, Ireland of those cities that even if we are seen as a
that would see a small levy on the cost with 9%, France, Italy and Spain are all 10%, top 10 city in the UK we fall quite far behind
Bristol is just the latest city
May 2018
www.hotelowner.co.uk
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