Popular Spanish beaches such as Costa Blanca, Alicante, and Benidorm town are planning to introduce a tourist tax, which obliges foreigners to pay up to €4 per day for a nightly stay. Tourists are unhappy with the measure as several of them have said they won’t visit the destination anymore.
“I no longer visit Majorca or Florida, I’m simply not prepared to pay a tourist tax, ever,” a commenter said for Express.co.uk, indicating that they stopped visiting Majorca as tourist tax is effective for nightly stays there.
Another one said that such a tax isn’t an issue if the destination is worth it and beautiful while making a comparison of Spanish beaches with Rome, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
Several others didn’t make a fuss out of it, saying it costs as much as a small beer a day, while some other commenters even recommended North African destinations – stressing they offer beautiful hotels and luxury, minus the tax charges and EU rules.
The new tax proposed by member parties of Botanic – a governmental pact, exempts sportsmen and women attending official competitions and events with public spectators or those staying for scientific, health, industrial, economic or professional association conferences as well as for people with disabilities.
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Furthermore it is a wholly misleading and alarmist headline. No one is charged to go to the beach. Why is the MDB spouting this rubbish? I thought you were trying to promote the island? This article clearly does the opposite and is not true.
This is old news. The tax has been in place for some years now. It’s not great to squeeze visitors for more but what really stinks is the lack of transparency. This money goes into the general tax pot and only a proportion is distributed for tourist related projects. It is a con.
Hopefully this won't take off in Mallorca. If it does it will be illegal to charge EU citizens and not locals. Of course due to Brexit UK citizens might have to pay.
France has been doing that for years, with access fenced off. It's not a bad thing at all IMHO, and takes us another step forward to the quality tourism they're gagging for.
I used to joke that eventually we would be charged to breathe. For so many intakes of air!!! Doo not tell Ryanair!!!.
In my comment I refer to monies handed out during covid.
I think we'll find a lot of new taxes popping up. Or did you seriously believe that all the money handed out by governments was free? Please don't tell me you're that stupid.
There's always Brighton and Blackpool
Considering they talking about introducing a,tax visiting Wales, I think I rather pay it for being in Spain. Plenty of other countries have the same tax, so Spain is not the only one. British are complaining about most things, so not a bit surprised they objet about this.
The amount is small but it is symbolic by giving the impression that tourists are an invasive species to be taxed for the impudence of choosing ‘your’ destination. Given that tourists already spend their taxed paid money in the restaurants, bars, shops etc (which includes VAT ie another tax) , the logic of taxing them again for that privilege is hugely misplaced.