Friends of the Lake District welcomes decision to introduce a tourist tax 

Friends of the Lake District welcomes the news that Mayors in England will be empowered to introduce a tax on overnight stays in areas under their control.

For Jeremy Smith, Head of Campaigns & Engagement, “Levels of tourism to the Lake District are causing significant harm to the landscape and to the lived experience of local communities – and of visitors themselves. It is right that it falls on visitors to contribute towards the upkeep of the places they visit. This would help keep the Lake District special for everyone”.

The harms due to tourism include, but are not limited to, sewage discharge into lakes and rivers, high carbon emissions, congestion and damage to the landscape from visitor car journeys, and the ‘hollowing out’ of communities due to the spread of second homes and holiday lets. A major new Friends of the Lake District survey also exposes the current face of tourism to Cumbria: uncontrolled levels of littering, fly-camping and other forms of anti-social behaviour.

The tourism industry argues that a visitor tax will put people off holidays in the UK. It is unlikely that an individual or family that has decided to go on holiday in the UK switches to another European location because of the small additional cost due to a visitor levy that would, importantly, be proportional to the cost of the stay. Nor is there any evidence from cities and regions across Europe where tourist taxes are already in place that introducing a visitor levy reduces visitor numbers. The larger risk for the tourism industry in Cumbria is that tourism becomes self-defeating, with the number of people visiting the Lake District and the impact they have undermining the very reasons people come.

Friends of the Lake District’s research shows that there is strong support among both residents of Cumbria and visitors for a visitor levy. Of those surveyed in a YouGov poll of over 2,000 people, 68% of residents and 64% of past or future visitors strongly support or tend to support a visitor charge to fund protecting and enhancing the landscapes of the Lake District National Park. For Jeremy Smith, “It is clear that residents of Cumbria consider a visitor charge to be necessary and that visitors would be willing to pay, as they do in cities and regions across Europe. Candidates for Mayor of Cumbria should commit to introducing a visitor levy and lay out how they would use the funds raised to reduce tourism impacts and improve the visitor experience”.