A tourism tax is coming to parts of Wales from 2027. Cardiff has already confirmed it, and Conwy, Gwynedd and Ynys Môn are all consulting on it.

This step will bring Wales out of the exceptional category of heavily-touristed countries who do not have such a charge.

Whenever you go to Spain, the Netherlands, Greece, Portugal or even Romania, the state or city government will charge a small fee per night for visitors, usually in the low single digits of pounds.

Wales will charge most visitors £1.30, some 75p, and children will be exempt.

Lloyd Warburton
Lloyd Warburton (Lloyd Warburton)

We will also have a refund scheme for visiting carers, those escaping harm and visitors who are temporarily homeless.

All these countries and many more do it, so why shouldn’t we?

Of course, not everywhere will benefit from a tourist tax.

There’s little point charging visitors in Merthyr Tydfil or Blaenau Gwent when they get so few, and sure enough, they aren’t planning to.

But Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Powys and Gwynedd? We get hundreds of thousands of visitors between us each year. Our roads take an extra hammering, extra rubbish is generated and the local healthcare services experience a boost in demand and pressure.

And we accept that, knowing full well of the seasonal employment, the spending boost and the mostly positive attention Wales gets across Europe and the World from our visitors.

But local people should be remembered too. Walk along Aberystwyth promenade on any nice summer’s evening and you will see tonnes of rubbish sat next to the overflowing bins, and all the seagulls which are drawn into the litter feast.

A well-run town would use the extra money towards rolling bin collections on summer evenings and put any extra funds into the pot for infrastructure maintenance to keep the benefits of the summer season through the autumn and winter. Any use of this money beyond supporting the local environment and economy is unproductive and an insult to the industry who are sceptical enough of the tax as it is.

Putting myself in the shoes of a tourist, I would be more than happy to pay an extra couple of quid a night for the place I’m visiting to be that bit cleaner, and more pleasant for the locals to live.

A charge of £1.30 per night is a fair, reasonable and affordable price, and it’s difficult to imagine any tourist refusing to visit Wales over such a small fee. Almost every other country, city or municipality in Europe is charging a similar or even greater amount. And before anyone claims such a tax is “anti-English”, as some have, England is consulting on a near-identical proposal.

In Manchester, a voluntary scheme set up by a sector body in 2023 raised £2.8m in its first year, which was used to clean streets and hold events for visitors.

We need to realise that, until now, Wales has been the exception, and especially so when the number of visitors per resident in Wales is so high. Wales is not and should not be a cheap playground for visitors, we should have more self-respect as a nation than that.

As a local resident, I fully support a tourist tax, so long as it gets reinvested in the right places with maximum transparency and is managed in such a way as to bring a return on investment to visitors and locals alike.