Manchester is to introduce a “tourist tax” for people making overnight stays in the city.
Some 74 hotels and guesthouses have signed up to the scheme, which will see people pay an extra £1 per night.
It’s Manchester for fuck’s sake.
You charge the toll at the exits to the place.
A conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Says the Bathonian.
Pot. Kettle.
“You charge the toll at the exits to the place”
Which would (probably) only be payed once…
I’m from Manchester, I left in 80. I have to say it’s a lot better now, at least in the city centre than it was in the 60s and 70s. Great clubs as well.
As with Cornwall – you pay to get out.
More a payment to an organisation aimed at promoting the city than a tax. But if it’s like Blackpool’s BID scheme it’ll end up with a private police force, sorry security team who go around hassling people for being untidy or unusual or different. That’s because the security team won’t be accountable and won’t be trained. All in the name of making the place look good. Not much point in Blackpool. As for Manchester if it’s already the third visited city in the UK there is not much need to promote it. But I suppose the council is seeing the billions going into the local economy and thinking it’s missing out.
So it is voluntary? What is the benefit to hotels and guest houses who make their product £7 a week more expensive than their competitors?
How does making accommodation more expensive attract consumers? (Outside of a Veblen good which a stay in Manchester isn’t. )
The idea of a holiday in Manchester being a Veblen good is extremely amusing.
The idea is to help boost the tourist economy as the city recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
Huh?
How does taxing something boost said activity?
In order to encourage people to visit our city, we’re going to fleece them off even more money!
Are they actively trying to dissuade people from visiting cities now?
Before the Covid lockdowns began Manchester was the third most visited city for international tourists in the UK.
I’m not sure what this says about Manchester, the UK, or international tourists.
Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it isn’t good.
A lot more people come to Manchester for an event that happens to be in Manchester than come to visit the attractions of the city itself.
There isn’t zero tourism to Manchester, but it’s nothing like Liverpool’s endless Beatles tourists. Manchester Central (the conference centre) is so big it mostly does convention-type events open to the ticket-buying public rather than closed business conferences, and ticket-buyers to ComicCon-type events or car shows count as tourists. Lots of world tours do Manchester Arena and the O2 in London as their only UK stops (or those two plus the Hydro in Glasgow). Manchester City’s stadium is, for various boring technical reasons, by far the best stadium for a concert in the North of England. Is an Irish fan flying to Manchester to go to a Bruce Springsteen concert an “international tourist”? Officially yes (and they will pay for a hotel room and a meal the same as any other tourist), but it’s not really what most people think of when they say “tourist”, nor is it really something that you can capitalise on and get people to come back every year.
Ooh, look…it’s some lazy perceptions of Manchester. Sorry folks, but I expected better
I live ten miles away and never visit if I can help it but at least I have an informed perspective. The place has changed tremendously since we had the IRA redecorate for us and the trendy young types love it.
Da yoof are da phewture.
Edinburgh is no 2 after London for international tourists to the UK and is a lot smaller than London and Manchester. At festival time and Christmas and New Year is it insufferably overcrowded for us locals.
We are introducing a £2 a night tourist tax (capped at 7 days, so max £14pp). It’ll make no difference for the crowded times, but may have a marginal effect on the scruffies for the rest of the year.
Richard Gadsden,
Yes. Spot on.
The point of tourist taxes are to tax the benefit of what the state provides and maintains. Cafes near Windsor Castle get a lot more visitors than the ones on the other side of Windsor, and the maintenance of the castle by the government creates that wealth, so it’s only fair the state taxes the hell out of that cafe.
The problem with other things is that you’re more in competition. Add a couple of quid to people’s trip to Comic Con and maybe they don’t come, maybe Comic Con goes elsewhere.
Also, I never understand why governments do these separate tourist taxes. Just stick it on the business rates. Really push it up for the hotels right near the sights rather than the ones half a mile away.
I live ten miles away and never visit if I can help it but at least I have an informed perspective.
I live 3,710 miles away and visited Manchester once, back in the late ’90s. My informed perspective is that the Manchester of the late ’90s might have been better than the Manchester of the late ’60s or the ’70s, but that doesn’t mean it’s somewhere you want to be. It just means it’s better (or less awful, if you prefer) than it was.
It’s kind of like rooting for Aston Villa… “Hey, we aren’t that good, but we aren’t nearly as shitty as we used to be!”
But Business Rates are shared 50% by the council and 50% by the treasury, so they’d have to give half of that increased rate away, plus they are restricted as to what and how Business Rates are spent whereas a self-created “Tourist Tax” can be hypothecated and spunked away on whatever white elephant the local council chooses to spend it on.
I expect that Boat People housed in Manchester will have their 14 quid paid for them.
I’m not so sure about being so dismissive about Manchester. It does, I’m told*, have a rep as being the UK’s second city for innovation**. Supported by InsaneApache’s mention of the clubs. Good clubs, good fashion seem to be indicators of it. Tourists? I’d echo Richard Gadsden’s view. There are tourists & tourists. There are those that go for the sights etc. They’re the same people might be going to to Cairo or the Bahamas. And there are those who go for what a city is & does & for those particular things.
*Has to be told for me. Through personal experience Manchester may be entirely mythical.
** And if London continues in its policy of replacing its population with third world peasants whose cultures haven’t produced any innovation in the past couple of millennia, soon to be first.
“The problem with other things is that you’re more in competition. Add a couple of quid to people’s trip to Comic Con and maybe they don’t come, maybe Comic Con goes elsewhere.”
Comic Con™ would go elsewhere. Has in the past for this reason, or similar. And there’s not exactly a dearth of large conference halls/exhibition centers that would happily offer Interesting Rates to host a prime event and are easily accessible.
And while those events move a lot of moolah, actual profits are pretty slim, and can rapidly turn a net loss.
Especially since a significant amount of visitors are on a tight purse where a couple of quid makes the difference between going or not.
Doubly so, because they make up a significant amount of the Floor Show, because they come Dressed for the Occasion, and are a “free” part of the windowdressing for the organisation, even though they tend not to spend all that much at the event. But they do pull the Fanbois/grlls and the Tourists, who do spend.
Lose the Poor People by pricing them out, and your event ( at least in the Fantasy/Con scene ) will tank, rapidly.
A harsh lesson organisors have learned, and venues regularly don’t get, because they don’t understand the Scene.
Comic Con™ ( UK/Europe ltd. inc. etc.) made that mistake when they “Invaded Europe”.. Oh boy, did they.. The popcorn was good,and the bonfires and pyres were a sight to behold.
Cudos to them.. They did adapt rapidly after the dust settled down, and became competitive. ( Although nowhere near the level/quality they’d like you to believe… )
Witchie,
Manchester must be pretty damned nice if the boat people are gracious enough to allow themselves to be housed there. Unless of course there are employment opportunities for which their skill-sets are ideally suited.
I’m not so sure about being so dismissive about Manchester. It does, I’m told*, have a rep as being the UK’s second city for innovation**.
For some reason, I’m getting visions of that promotional film about Sheffield at the beginning of The Full Monty.
You mean “Threads”?
🙂
Well, dropping a bomb on it certainly made it a City On The Move. 😉
I remember it being shown to us in Infant School assembly. COTM of course, not Threads.
《may have a marginal effect on the scruffies for the rest of the year.》
Manchester has the only non-“London” UK airport that has a decent number of long-haul flights. There is an advantage to arriving the previous evening and staying overnight, obviating the worry about transport disruption making one late for the flight.
I have been reliably informed that there are a couple of Foot-the-ball outfits in the neighbourhood which are quite popular with some people who are into that sort of thing — of whom some live quite some distance away and might be desirous of an hotel after the game to avoid travelling home when absolutely shit-faced. Alternatively they may be the proponents of a visiting establishment from far away — possibly even abroad — for whom it is not possible to make the round-trip in one day. It might be advisable for these two groups to be accommodated in separate establishments to avoid outbreaks of fisticuffs whereby the Marquis of Fantailler’s rules are unfortunately absent.
In neither of these cases is an extra few quid going to be anything more than a rounding error.