Hoteliers reject £2 nightly tourist tax proposal
- Published
Hoteliers have rejected a proposal to introduce a nightly £2 tourist tax at a university city popular with visitors.
Under the plan, visitors to hotels in Cambridge with 10 or more rooms would have been subject to the levy.
A Cambridge City Council report said the payment is common in Europe and had been successful since being introduced in Manchester.
The visitor levy was was rejected in a ballot of hoteliers by 16 votes to six, external.
The proposal would have raised between £1.5m and £2.6m per year, according to the council.
The scheme, known as an accommodation business improvement district (ABID), could achieve "significant investment in the visitor economy in the Greater Cambridge area at a level previously unseen", according to the document.
It would have only affected hotels with more than 10 rooms and a rateable value over £34,500 where the core function of the businesses is as a hotel.
The city and surrounding area attracts more than 7.6 million visitors, external a year, according to Cambridge Visit.
Before the pandemic, about 1.1 million visitors stayed overnight and it had more than six million day trippers, according to a city council report in 2023, external.
The same report said footfall levels in the first quarter of 2023 exceeded pre-pandemic totals, with one in 10 city employees directly employed in tourism.
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