Discussion around Scottish tourist taxes ramps up
Argyll and Bute Council has concluded a public consultation on a visitor levy (or tourist tax) with more than 3,300 responses taken following a similar consultation in Highlands that drew 4,000 responses. These responses are now in the process of being analysed for support for or dissent against the Council’s proposal to apply a 5% surcharge on overnight stay fees.
For our part, Common Weal supports the introduction of such a tourist tax especially with the fee being linked to the price of accommodation rather than the flat rate tax favoured in many places in Europe or the banded tax initially favoured by the Scottish Government. The reason for this is that a flat or banded tax almost always ends up being a significant percentage of the cost of staying in a modest hotel, camping ground or B&B but is effectively nothing to the kind of people who can afford to book out an entire castle for a grouse shooting expedition.
There will always be tension around how high to set such a tourist tax, especially when there are differing views as to the purpose of the tax. For those who purely wish to maximise revenue - regardless of the costs of overtourism or even because they wish to encourage even greater tourist numbers - there will be a temptation to set the levy as low as they can get away with so as to avoid turning people away.
However for those who recognise the problem of overtourism in their area, setting the fee higher to deliberately act as a barrier to prevent damage rather than merely a cover to pay for it is the entire point of the levy.
An example can be seen this week in Venice with the return of their levy not just on overnight stays (which they also have) but what is effectively an entrance fee for people who visit but only stay for the day (estimates are that around 70% of visitors to the historic city do not stay overnight). This fee is being reintroduced after a pilot scheme last year, but with the fee for “last minute” daytrippers being doubled to €10. Critics have said that the pilot failed to bring down tourist numbers in a city of 50,000 residents but up to 30 million tourists each year. Time will tell if the increased fees will reach a point where tourists will start to consider going elsewhere.
One major difference between Scotland and the rest of Europe when it comes to tourist taxes however is in the level of local democracy we have. In most places - like Venice - the tourist tax is controlled at a municipal or city level. Scotland lacks that kind of local democracy so we’re forced to control our tax at a Local Authority level - what the rest of Europe would call “regional government”. In places like Highland, this means that tourist tax revenues end up being controlled by Inverness and there is the risk that revenues from tourists going to particularly local hotspots end up not being properly distributed to compensate those areas - this would be a particular problem in a tax scheme designed to maximise revenue as it risks areas being turned into tourist attractions by, say, an appearance in a blockbuster film being turned into cash cows for a relatively remote Council. Scotland needs the kind of municipal government that the rest of Europe calls “normal” so that local taxes can be controlled locally, in the places that need them.