Business leaders and hospitality associations in the UK’s largest cities have warmed England’s Metro Mayors who have asked the Government for ‘tourist tax’ powers.
Led by Manchester and Liverpool, the two cities with operating overnight visitor levies, the signatories of the open letter represent the Business Improvement Districts and business communities in Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester, London and the West Midlands.
The letter questions the threat to existing models of visitor levies currently in place in Liverpool and Manchester.
Both Manchester and Liverpool have operating visitor levies of £2 and £1 overnight for guests staying in city hotels.
They are managed and administered through well-established Accommodation BIDS (ABIDS) representing the city’s hotel and serviced accommodation industries.
In the letter they say that “The Metro Mayors state that there is “currently no dedicated income stream to reinvest in the tourism sector’s long term growth”.
Yet, the two ABIDS currently generate over £6m a year for the two cities. These funds are entirely focused on supporting the visitor economy in city centres and dedicated to developing tourism offers.
Both ABIDs attract visitor numbers in their tens of millions annually and bring hundreds of millions to their city in total economic impact.
They add that Despite the Metro Mayors’ insistence that “this kind of revenue should be publicly controlled and democratically accountable”, the revenue generated by the current visitor levies is managed and administered by independent, industry-led boards.
“A transparent and democratic process implements a BID, and the administration after implementation is equally rigorous. Comprehensive oversight and scrutiny is a vital component of BIDs. What the Mayors mean is that it should be privately raised, but publicly spent.”
