Proposed Tourist Tax in Italy
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The Italian government is to allow Italian cities and towns to charge a tourist tax of up to 5 euros per day. This money would have to be spent on local tourist services. Each city can choose whether to levy the tax, it could only be for certain times of the year, exemptions could be given eg to youth hostels. Italian tourists would also have to pay any tax.
What do you think of this? Would it deter you from visiting a destination if you had to pay this additional cost? Do you think it is a good way to fund better tourist services?
November 16th, 2006 at 11:29 am
The Italian government has confirmed that it is ditching proposals to introduce an accommodation tax next year.
I’m glad to hear this is I think it was ill conceived in the first place. There is so much choice for leisure travellers that this could have put some visitors off going to Italy. The increase in tax revenue could then be insignificant compared to the loss in total tourism revenue if visitor numbers fell.
March 4th, 2007 at 11:25 am
[...] I am not sure how accommodation suppliers would feel about being the ones to collect the donation, it’s got to involve more work for them. I have the feeling that a sneaky way to get the donation would be that a suggested donation was included in the price and you had to opt out of paying. I don’t think that it is a good idea, a bed tax proposal was recently withdrawn in Venice. Visitors pay VAT on all their accommodation, meals and purchases and I think that in a very competitive travel market, Edinburgh could just be shooting itself in the foot. What do you think? [...]