Highland council votes for 5% visitor levy on overnight stays from 2027

Visitors to the Highlands will pay a 5% charge on every overnight stay from October 2027 after councillors voted on Thursday to introduce Scotland’s second visitor levy, a measure the council says will raise about £10m a year for the roads, toilets and car parks that 2.5 million tourists use each summer.

Highland council’s 45-28 vote follows a six-month consultation that drew 11,400 responses, more than any exercise the authority has run. The levy will apply to hotels, B&Bs, hostels, self-catering lets and campsites across an area the size of Belgium, with a cap of seven nights. A family paying £140 a night for a week in Ullapool would pay an extra £49.

The decision makes the Highlands the second Scottish area to use powers granted in 2024, after Edinburgh, whose charge began in July. Councillors in Argyll and Bute and the Western Isles are expected to follow. The council’s convener, Morag Sinclair, said the money would be ring-fenced for visitor infrastructure and would not be used to fill holes in the general budget. “Every August the people of Durness and Applecross watch their roads crumble and their bins overflow, and the bill lands on 240,000 council taxpayers,” she said. “From next year the people who enjoy the view will contribute to keeping it.”

The first projects to be funded are a £3.2m programme of passing-place repairs on the A838 and A894 in Sutherland, 14 new public toilet blocks and a 300-space car park at the Fairy Pools on Skye, where the council has recorded 1,900 vehicles a day on a road built for 200.

Accommodation businesses are divided. The Federation of Small Businesses in the Highlands said 61% of its members opposed the levy, and the owner of a four-bedroom guesthouse in Dornoch described the timing as “brutal” after two seasons of rising energy bills and a fall in American visitors. “I am a tax collector now, unpaid, on top of a 20% VAT bill,” said Pauline Grant. “I will have to put it on the price, and the people who pay it will be the families who can least afford it.”

Larger operators were more supportive. The manager of a 90-bed hotel in Fort William, Rory Cameron, said guests “barely notice” similar charges in Amsterdam or Barcelona. “What they do notice is a 40-minute queue for a car park and no toilet at the end of it,” he said.

Self-catering owners have warned that the online platforms through which most of them take bookings have yet to confirm how they will collect the charge, and the council has set aside £400,000 to build its own registration and payment system. Businesses will be able to keep 1.5% of the levy to cover administration.

Opposition councillors tried to delay the start to 2028 and to exempt stays of less than £50 a night, but both amendments fell. The levy will be reviewed after three years.