Barcelona – you gotta pay to stay.

In 2012, the town hall of Barcelona introduced to the region a ‘tourism tax’ ranging from 50 cents to €2.50 per person per night subject to the type of accommodation you stayed in. This is not unusual now, as most Cities have over the years introduced these taxes and they range from city to city and even country to country.

This tax has contributed to over 100 million euros to the Catalunya regional governments purse in the last 4 years.

However, the figures for last year showed that Catalunya had 30 million tourists visit but only 8 million stayed in hotels. So the monies received from this ‘tourist tax’ was no where near as much as it could have been.

Of course you cannot try to tax everyone that comes into Barcelona, especially those that drive or come by bus or train for a day trip or stay with friends and or family. But you can charge those arriving on cruise ships….

Last year alone saw over 2.5 million cruise guests in the home city of Gaudi, especially visiting some of his most famous buildings.

I can only imagine with the launch of the Harmony of the Seas and Carnival Vista this year, that this has increased for 2016. So the local government are now thinking of implementing a ‘tourist tax’ to those that visit on ships. There has been some opposition from some of the opposing parties, trying to justify why cruise passengers should be taxed. The local council have advised that the monies obtained from this tax will go to the regional government and not to them selves.. we shall see.

One of the main reasons for this ‘tourist tax’ is so that the city can compensate for the costs to the local administration for the tourist services that they offer.

So if and when this will be introduced we will have to see, could be as soon as next year.

I do wonder though, if they will try to apply this tax for those cruise guests just arriving in Barcelona to embark or disembark a ship but whom do not actually get any time to spend sightseeing in the city?

Would you be happy to pay a couple of Euros to visit Barcelona for the day?

What do you think would happen if they introduced this into some of the UK cities such as London or Manchester, do you think that would be fair to visitors?

Dawn

x