Bath council considers imposing a tourist tax

Bath could become the first UK city to impose a tourist tax on overnight visitors to help offset the £37 million of cuts the local authority is facing over the next five years.

Talking to BBC Radio Bristol, and reported on by the Independent, Charles Gerrish, a Conservative councillor, said: “We’re looking at options for generating additional revenue. If you go on holiday in Europe… when you stay in a hotel, you are asked to make a very small contribution to the local authority in addition to your hotel bill. When I stay in Italy, for example, I pay something like one euro per head per night.

“It is something we believe, in an area that receives as many tourists as we do from all over the world, we ought to be allowed to consider.”

Compared with the European cities mentioned by Gerrish, the rate of VAT paid in the UK makes the idea slightly more expensive. Whilst many European destinations, such as Venice, Barcelona, Paris and Berlin, charge a hotel tax, the VAT rate on accommodation is 10 per cent in Speain, Italy and France, while it is lower at seven per cent in Germany. Any tourist tax in the UK would exist on top of VAT, which currently adds 20 per cent to the cost of a UK hotel stay.

In 2015, Camden Council in North London announced that it was considering introducing a £1 per person per night ‘bed tax’, which would raise an estimated £5 million a year, which would be directed towards extra street cleaning in popular tourist areas like Camden Lock.