Bournemouth hoteliers are up in arms about a suggested £2.40 tourist tax, claiming that it could put people off visiting the town. But history suggests footfall could, in fact, improve after a levy is introduced.

Many destinations charge tourist taxes, often in the form of a nominal nightly fee added to a hotel bill. It is also common for tourists to be charged to enter or exit a country in addition to visa fees, as is the case in Bali and New Zealand.

Tourist taxes are rarely introduced to deter visitors, although more overcrowded destinations might see this as a happy byproduct of the scheme. Rather, the charges are usually designed to raise funds to counter the ill effects of tourism, and are often pumped into improving infrastructure and public services or to fund environmental conservation. 

In some destinations, a tourist tax has been introduced to proactively increase visitor numbers: in Manchester, a £1 visitor levy was introduced in 2023 to improve the marketing of the destination, and Bournemouth councillors have also promised to reinvest the funds into marketing the town as a tourist destination, and funding events such as the local air show.

They may be onto something. Telegraph research finds that in nearly all cases, the introduction of a visitor levy has coincided with a significant increase in tourist numbers. Clearly there is no causality here (nobody actively seeks out a destination with a tourist tax), but at the very least it indicates that tourist taxes, usually introduced when visitor numbers are on an upwards trajectory, don’t deter arrivals in a meaningful way. Let’s look at a few case studies.

Bhutan

Tourist tax: $100 per day (£76)

Introduced: 1991

Change in visitors: 10,988 per cent increase (1992 to 2019)