Hoteliers reject £2 nightly tourist tax proposal

Hoteliers have rejected a proposal to introduce a nightly £2 tourist tax at a university city popular with visitors.

Under the plan, visitors to hotels in Cambridge with 10 or more rooms would have been subject to the levy.

A Cambridge City Council report said the payment is common in Europe and had been successful since being introduced in Manchester.

The visitor levy was was rejected in a ballot of hoteliers by 16 votes to six.

The proposal would have raised between £1.5m and £2.6m per year, according to the council.

The scheme, known as an accommodation business improvement district (ABID), could achieve "significant investment in the visitor economy in the Greater Cambridge area at a level previously unseen", according to the document.

It would have only affected hotels with more than 10 rooms and a rateable value over £34,500 where the core function of the businesses is as a hotel.

The city and surrounding area attracts more than 7.6 million visitors a year, according to Cambridge Visit.

Before the pandemic, about 1.1 million visitors stayed overnight and it had more than six million day trippers, according to a city council report in 2023.

The same report said footfall levels in the first quarter of 2023 exceeded pre-pandemic totals, with one in 10 city employees directly employed in tourism.

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