Britain Introduces a Tourist Tax So Visitors Can Finally Contribute to the Cost of Being Told They Are Doing It Wrong
A five per cent overnight levy is being prepared so that people who sleep somewhere other than their own house can help fund the experience of being frowned at in a breakfast room.
LONDON — Labour mayors have been given, or are about to be given, the power to charge visitors for the crime of staying the night. The levy is described as modest, local, and necessary. Hotel owners describe it as the moment the industry finally understands why people stay with their cousin in Croydon.
The tax is not only for foreigners. It applies to Britons who spend a night away from home, which is the government’s way of confirming that the word “tourist” now includes anyone who has packed a toothbrush. A family from Leeds visiting the Science Museum is, for fiscal purposes, an inbound market.
Hotel Police and Other Phrases That Should Not Exist
Reports of “hotel police” to enforce the levy have the ring of a sketch that escaped from the 1970s and found a job in local government. The image is irresistible: a clipboard in a lobby, a couple from Dortmund asked whether they have paid for the privilege of a kettle and a view of a brick wall, a night manager who went into hospitality because he liked people and is now an unpaid customs officer.
Edinburgh has already walked this road. English mayors are studying the results with the expression of people who have seen a warning sign and ordered the same sandwich.
What the Money Is For, Officially
Officially the money is for the things visitors use: bins, buses, the pavement outside the attraction, the staff who explain that the attraction is closed on Tuesdays. Unofficially the money is for the gap between what councils spend and what central government sends. That gap has a long name and a short temper.
Hospitality is already paying more to employ people, heat rooms, and serve a full English that tourists insist on calling breakfast. Adding a percentage on the room is, from the industry’s point of view, asking the drowning man to hold the invoice above water.
London’s Special Contribution
London already charges visitors in a dozen unofficial ways: the cost of a sandwich that comes with a lecture about provenance, the Tube fare that resets your will to live at Zone 1, the hotel room whose window faces a lightwell in which a single plant is making a brave go of photosynthesis.
A formal levy merely makes the unofficial official. Tourists will pay it, complain in the correct order (TripAdvisor first, spouse second), and still photograph the Guards. Britons will pay it and write to their MP. The MP will reply that the levy is a mayoral matter. The mayor will reply that the Treasury left them no choice. The Treasury will reply from a building that does not charge itself for overnight stays.
The Target
The target is not the German family on a budget. The target is the habit of treating every activity as a tap that has not yet been fitted with a meter. Stay the night: meter. Drive the car: meter. Breathe near a camera: meter. The comedy is that Britain still advertises itself as a place of welcome while itemising the welcome.
A country that invented the guest-house has discovered the surcharge. The guest-house will survive. It has survived worse, including the guests. What may not survive is the pretence that this is about “experience” rather than arithmetic.
Visitors are advised to keep the receipt. It may be the only souvenir that is honest about what the trip cost.
