Welsh plans to allow local councils to charge a visitor levy are progressing with today’s stage 4 final vote in the Senedd which allows the bill to progress to Royal Assent.
Local councils will be able to choose whether they charge people to stay overnight in tourist accommodation in Wales. Under the scheme, campers and hostel users would pay £0.75 per adult per night. All other accommodation including Airbnb and hotels would charge £1.30 per person per night, including children. The tax could raise £33m if all councils decide to adopt it.
Leighton Reed, partner at accountants MHA in Wales, said:
“Local residents disagree about visitor levies but the advantage over other forms of taxation such as VAT, is that the levies are ploughed back into the local economy. Local authorities will have to carry out a 12 month consultation so the earliest it can apply would be 2027. The rates, at least to start with, are not very high but the money will be used locally to offset the detrimental effects of tourism and councils will have to report back to residents how the money has been spent."
What does a visitor levy mean for Welsh tourism?
"Wales would join the ranks of many other global destinations that already have a tourism tax including Venice, Barcelona, Paris and in the UK, Manchester. The downside is that the burden of collecting the tax will fall on accommodation businesses in Wales, increasing both the red tape for those businesses and their costs on top of recent National Insurance and National Minimum Wage increases."
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