Hello, welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, Tuesday the 15th of July.

Travel Desk Tuesday, of course. And our dear friend Amelia Neith, excellent colleague of mine from the Independent Travel Desk is here.

Amelia, you've become tourism tax correspondent because there's so many of these things suddenly being launched.

I understand most recently Wales has come up with their version.

Yes, so on the 8th of July, Wales introduced a landmark law, which is allowing local councils to introduce their own tourist taxes within their area.

Visitors can expect to start paying around £1.30 extra per person per night, roughly around

2027, as it has to go through a consultation process with their local communities.

So this isn't something which is going to be happening necessarily across Wales,

but it just gives the local authority the option to introduce one if they want to.

Yes, so we've seen something similar past last year in Scotland, so Wales has sort of

followed suit. The money raised by these visitor levies will be reinvested into tourism-related

expenses, so it'll go back into improving things like toilets, footpaths, beaches, and give back to the community where lots of tourists like to visit.

£1.30 per person per night doesn't sound like very much money.

It reminds me a little bit of, I think in Paris you have to pay a couple of euros tax per night to direct to the hotel.

And that's actually a bit of a fath.

I mean, you've looked at tourism taxes more widely.

What sorts of prices are they coming in at?

So in Scotland, it's different.

They do it by a percentage.

They will do around 5 percent so for example in

Glasgow who recently gave the go ahead in their local council to introduce it around 20272

that will work out roughly about £4.80 places like Venice who is one of the first destinations to introduce such a thing,

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