5 ms·

Yeah, this is roughly where my thoughts lie. When my partner and I were travelling around Europe, many of the popular cities charged a bed tax — usually only a

by frio 8y ago

Yeah, this is roughly where my thoughts lie. When my partner and I were travelling around Europe, many of the popular cities charged a bed tax — usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx. Back home, there’s been debate about doing this too. I hope the pro-tax side wins. Our country is suffering under the annual tourist load, and we need more money in the pot to support it — at the basic end of the spectrum, there are lots of popular places that desperately need toilets and rubbish facilities for the tourists (and the locals) to use. Private industry cannot fill that gap (or, so far, has not) — and while the public are profiting from the visitors, more of that profit needs to be diverted to public coffers to enable the government to fix the problem. A bed tax is a great tool for helping that to happen.

pj_mukh 8y ago
"usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx." This is exactly the right strategy! And the "infrastructure to support more tourists" is exactly what this article lays out.
- buboard 8y ago
  but if it's not enough to put them off, the tax doesn't work
  - pj_mukh 8y ago
    The idea isn't to put them off, that seems like a mindlessly cynical goal. Build the infrastructure to support the larger numbers. If the infrastructure needs to discriminate against tourists, that's fine too (e.g. added trains for tourists vs. commuters), new digital methods tool can allow for this.
    - akvadrako 8y ago
      No, the idea is to put them off. It's basically impossible to "build infrastructure" to support them, whatever that means. There is no more room for trains or even sidewalks, so it would mean totally changing the cities into something else.
      - pj_mukh 8y ago
        Yes. Cities change. All the time. Why is this suddenly a problem? New train/subway lines are built (even in SF! [1]), sidewalks are widened (car lanes can be collapsed). None of this is new, in fact, this kind of growth and change has been the standard in the last 100 years of urban development. This doesn't stop now. [1]: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/15/18096775/bart-second-crossing-transbay-tube-bay-sf-transit https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/15/18096775/bart-second-crossi...
        akvadrako 8y ago
        It's obvious why this is a problem. Just look at Venice - when a city is mostly filled with tourists it becomes like a theme park. Are you serious about building subways and widening sidewalks there? I suppose you'll say everybody should just move out if they don't like it, but most people consider it the better option to plan how their cities evolve.
        frio 8y ago
        Venice is an extreme case, I agree. That's one of the places that we visited that had the small kind of bed tax I'm thinking of; unfortunately that probably isn't fixing their problems. Many of their tourists stay in cruise ships (which have to have the lagoon dredged to support them; sinking Venice itself...); a bed tax doesn't target them, and they're completely and utterly overwhelmed regardless. It was a fascinating and deeply depressing place to visit. A bed tax in general, applicable to both hotels and AirBNB, I suspect probably deals better with the other end of the spectrum. At the end of the spectrum I'm thinking about (and probably my co-poster), extra funding is necessary for the municipalities that can sustain further growth of their tourism industry, but are struggling to keep up with demand. New Zealand falls somewhere in here; we have significant problems with tourists literally shitting on walking trails because the previous Government dropped all its tourist budget on global advertising, and didn't anticipate the sheer success they'd have; we therefore lack basic amenities like toilets in many popular tourist spots (or -- if there are toilets -- they're long drops maintained by the Department of Conservation, which most tourists won't use). We can do better with a little extra cash; I believe the new Government is currently investigating a border tax, but a bed tax would help the regions too. Other major metropolises popular with tourists like Paris, Rome, Barcelona etc. could use the extra cash in broadly similar ways; supporting the growth of transit systems and developing infrastructure that supports and promotes distributing the tourist load to other attractions. I suspect that if you were to put in a large bed tax with the explicit goal of discouraging visitors in places like Venice... it might not work? The rich would put up with it and go anyway. You'd probably cut out many of the poorer visitors, but I doubt you'd see a big net drop unless the tax approached a point that it killed the tourism industry altogether, and sunk the local economy. I suspect that for somewhere like Venice, there needs to be stronger intervention; the category of idea I'm thinking of is a lottery system like the US parks or something.
kaffee 8y ago
Check out Chicago or Montreal. The tourist tax is just massive.
- sologoub 8y ago
  Montreal looks to be only 3.5% extra, not exactly massive. Their sales and goods/services taxes are high, which works out to close to 20% total tax on a room. Still not that crazy. Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-How_much_are_hotel_taxes-Montreal_Quebec.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-H...
  - kaffee 8y ago
    I think YUL has some of the highest airport fees for any major North American city. For example, there's an "Airport Improvement Fee" of 30 CAD (on every flight) https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/legal/surcharges.html https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/legal/surcharges.ht... My sense is that this is just one of many fees that hit you when you fly into Montréal. I think the total fees are more like 60-90 USD on every flight. (I'm not suggesting that high taxes are bad. I support aggressively high VAT taxes refunded to the poor and lower middle class.)
    - eigenvector 8y ago
      All Canadian airports have high AIFs (Toronto's is $25 for instance), and they are charged to everyone not just tourists. It's more to do with how airports are structured and managed in Canada versus other countries. It's a user-pay model rather than having them subsidized by the government. In fact many actually pay ground rent to the federal government.
      - volkl48 8y ago
        It's arguably not a model that has actually worked out very well for Canada. They push a significant portion of their air travelers over the US border for much cheaper flights. And they wind up with fewer flights and worse route options to their own domestic airports as a result. Ex: Burlington VT is about 40% Canadian, Plattsbugh + Niagara Falls NY are almost entirely Canadian traffic.

by frio 8y ago

pj_mukh 8y ago

"usually only a euro or two a night, so not enough to put us off in anyway, but in aggregate allowing the cities to invest in facilities that could support the tourist influx." This is exactly the right strategy! And the "infrastructure to support more tourists" is exactly what this article lays out.

buboard 8y ago
but if it's not enough to put them off, the tax doesn't work
- pj_mukh 8y ago
  The idea isn't to put them off, that seems like a mindlessly cynical goal. Build the infrastructure to support the larger numbers. If the infrastructure needs to discriminate against tourists, that's fine too (e.g. added trains for tourists vs. commuters), new digital methods tool can allow for this.
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    No, the idea is to put them off. It's basically impossible to "build infrastructure" to support them, whatever that means. There is no more room for trains or even sidewalks, so it would mean totally changing the cities into something else.
    - pj_mukh 8y ago
      Yes. Cities change. All the time. Why is this suddenly a problem? New train/subway lines are built (even in SF! [1]), sidewalks are widened (car lanes can be collapsed). None of this is new, in fact, this kind of growth and change has been the standard in the last 100 years of urban development. This doesn't stop now. [1]: https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/15/18096775/bart-second-crossing-transbay-tube-bay-sf-transit https://sf.curbed.com/2018/11/15/18096775/bart-second-crossi...
      - akvadrako 8y ago
        It's obvious why this is a problem. Just look at Venice - when a city is mostly filled with tourists it becomes like a theme park. Are you serious about building subways and widening sidewalks there? I suppose you'll say everybody should just move out if they don't like it, but most people consider it the better option to plan how their cities evolve.
        frio 8y ago
        Venice is an extreme case, I agree. That's one of the places that we visited that had the small kind of bed tax I'm thinking of; unfortunately that probably isn't fixing their problems. Many of their tourists stay in cruise ships (which have to have the lagoon dredged to support them; sinking Venice itself...); a bed tax doesn't target them, and they're completely and utterly overwhelmed regardless. It was a fascinating and deeply depressing place to visit. A bed tax in general, applicable to both hotels and AirBNB, I suspect probably deals better with the other end of the spectrum. At the end of the spectrum I'm thinking about (and probably my co-poster), extra funding is necessary for the municipalities that can sustain further growth of their tourism industry, but are struggling to keep up with demand. New Zealand falls somewhere in here; we have significant problems with tourists literally shitting on walking trails because the previous Government dropped all its tourist budget on global advertising, and didn't anticipate the sheer success they'd have; we therefore lack basic amenities like toilets in many popular tourist spots (or -- if there are toilets -- they're long drops maintained by the Department of Conservation, which most tourists won't use). We can do better with a little extra cash; I believe the new Government is currently investigating a border tax, but a bed tax would help the regions too. Other major metropolises popular with tourists like Paris, Rome, Barcelona etc. could use the extra cash in broadly similar ways; supporting the growth of transit systems and developing infrastructure that supports and promotes distributing the tourist load to other attractions. I suspect that if you were to put in a large bed tax with the explicit goal of discouraging visitors in places like Venice... it might not work? The rich would put up with it and go anyway. You'd probably cut out many of the poorer visitors, but I doubt you'd see a big net drop unless the tax approached a point that it killed the tourism industry altogether, and sunk the local economy. I suspect that for somewhere like Venice, there needs to be stronger intervention; the category of idea I'm thinking of is a lottery system like the US parks or something.

kaffee 8y ago

Check out Chicago or Montreal. The tourist tax is just massive.

sologoub 8y ago
Montreal looks to be only 3.5% extra, not exactly massive. Their sales and goods/services taxes are high, which works out to close to 20% total tax on a room. Still not that crazy. Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-How_much_are_hotel_taxes-Montreal_Quebec.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g155032-i51-k6671607-H...
- kaffee 8y ago
  I think YUL has some of the highest airport fees for any major North American city. For example, there's an "Airport Improvement Fee" of 30 CAD (on every flight) https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/legal/surcharges.html https://www.aircanada.com/us/en/aco/home/legal/surcharges.ht... My sense is that this is just one of many fees that hit you when you fly into Montréal. I think the total fees are more like 60-90 USD on every flight. (I'm not suggesting that high taxes are bad. I support aggressively high VAT taxes refunded to the poor and lower middle class.)
  - eigenvector 8y ago
    All Canadian airports have high AIFs (Toronto's is $25 for instance), and they are charged to everyone not just tourists. It's more to do with how airports are structured and managed in Canada versus other countries. It's a user-pay model rather than having them subsidized by the government. In fact many actually pay ground rent to the federal government.
    - volkl48 8y ago
      It's arguably not a model that has actually worked out very well for Canada. They push a significant portion of their air travelers over the US border for much cheaper flights. And they wind up with fewer flights and worse route options to their own domestic airports as a result. Ex: Burlington VT is about 40% Canadian, Plattsbugh + Niagara Falls NY are almost entirely Canadian traffic.