Labour seem pleased with themselves over a new tax – even though businesses are screaming that they don’t want it.
Angela Rayner announced a new tourism tax earlier this month (Image: Getty)
It was just one UK seaside town but they spoke for the nation – Labour’s nuisance new ‘Tourism Tax‘ just has to go. Earlier this month Housing Secretary Angela Rayner excitedly unveiled a Keir Starmer policy that new PM Andy Burnham has also gleefully been flag-waving, to charge an extra 5% on B&B, hotel and Airbnb stays across England.
It will be up to regional mayors or councils to decide if they green-light it in their area, but when offered a stack load of extra cash to pump into their struggling public services or crumbling infrastructure, who will say no? But ‘no’ is exactly what concerned hoteliers in Blackpool told me last week, because they simply don’t want it for their seaside town.
Overnight stays need to be encouraged in Blackpool – not discouraged (Image: Getty)
Claire Smith, 62, and husband Mark Smith, 65 run a hotel in Blackpool (Image: Dave Nelson)
Andy and Angela will be scratching their heads. What’s wrong with some extra cash off punters for our mayors and councils? Wealthy American, European and Middle-Eastern tourists can afford it!
They think it’s free money. Labour have always loved tax because they spend loot like it’s going out of style. But anxious hoteliers told me it could come with a serious price.
The trouble is England’s full of towns, villages and seaside resorts that barely ever see a single foreign tourist.
When you’re jetting in for a fortnight’s break to the British Isles from Montana, you want to hit Edinburgh, maybe fly to Ireland, perhaps visit the Cotswolds, Cambridge, Bath, Oxford or York and obviously do London in a big way. If you get two free days after all that why not head to Windsor Castle or Stonehenge?
It’s unlikely too many foreign tourists will flock to Southend-on-Sea, Skegness, Blackpool, Cromer, Weymouth, Morecambe or Scarborough – or ‘Scarbados’ as its proud residents dub it.
Hoteliers in Blackpool told me they estimate about one in every 100 guests there are foreign tourists. The other 99% are Brits looking for a fun but affordable family staycation.
Overnight stays are the lifeblood of these seaside towns, because staying over means you’ll eat dinner in a restaurant, maybe look for an evening show or sporting event, pay to park your car and maybe go shopping the next day.
Paul Gregory-Ward (left), 60, and husband Richard Gregory-Ward, 57 run The Corona Hotel in Blackpool (Image: Dave Nelson)
Seaside towns in particular are eager for MORE overnight visitors, not frightening them away with sky-high bills.
The sneaky ‘just 5%’ line doesn’t wash either, because when you’re on a budget planning a hotel stay in Blackpool for three nights and it’s £150-a-night, that extra £22.50 added to your bill may push you to say: “Tell you what, let’s just make it two nights.”
Claire Smith, 62, and husband Mark, 65, run Blackpool’s 5-star Number One South Beach hotel boasting 11 bedrooms but told me current trading conditions for hospitality are worse than the 2008 financial crisis.
She told me of the tax: “I cannot find a single positive for this, either from the business side or from the visitor side.
“We’re already noting that these attractions in Blackpool are noting a 25% increase in ‘basket’ abandonment rates. So they’re working out the cost of a stay, bringing it all in an online basket, and then thinking, oh my God, no, we can’t do this, and then abandon it.
“This tourism tax would be absolutely horrendous.”
Paul Gregory-Ward, 60, has been running the four-star Corona Hotel with husband Richard, 57, for 25 years after taking the 22-bedroom hotel over in 2001.
Paul told me: “People are being savvy about their money at the moment so any new overnight levy may just encourage families to have day trips to Blackpool rather than stay overnight.”
Chris Rinder, 58, runs The Fossil Tree Hotel in Blackpool (Image: Dave Nelson)
While Chris Rinder, 58, who runs the nine-bedroom Fossil Tree Hotel, in North Shore, Blackpool, with wife Christine, told me: “It would be totally bonkers to introduce an overnight levy to a place like Blackpool, which is specifically geared towards tourism and relies on it so much.
“Overnight stays can also lead to restaurant bookings, more paid-for attraction visits, more use of the shops and paid car parking which all adds to the town’s revenue.
“But a Tourism Tax would effectively be penalising people for staying overnight – and that is bound to put people off coming. It would be detrimental to this town.”
If the rest of Europe has a tourism tax and the UK doesn’t that’s actually a good thing, as visitors might decide to come to London instead of Paris and spend their money in our economy.
So will Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham listen, and keep their Tourism Tax to big international tourism hubs like London? Or better still scrap it completely?
Will they listen to hoteliers in Blackpool? I bet a stick of rock they won’t.