The director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tristram Hunt, has said that overseas visitors to the UK should pay a tourist tax in a bid to bolster cash-strapped national museums.
In a comment piece published in the Financial Times last Saturday (15 February), Hunt wrote: “Let’s finally get on with it and introduce a tourist charge on overseas visitors at hotels and overnight tourist accommodation but with the funds ring fenced for cultural infrastructure.”
He added that unlike Paris, Dubai and New York, “London is now a crazy outlier in not having a visitor levy to manage mass tourism”.
Hunt continued: “We certainly need the cash. Across all major areas of support, public investment in the arts in England and Wales fell by 21% from 2009/10 to 2020/21… museums will necessarily remain a lower priority for government investment. Especially when the public finances are so chronically stretched.”
Hunt cites an upcoming report from the Cultural Policy Unit, a new independent think tank directed by the former editor of The Art Newspaper, Alison Cole, which advocates putting a small percentage-based charge—around 3% to 5%—on overnight stays, a move which could generate more than £1bn to support the UK’s cultural infrastructure. Last year at the UK think tank The Fabian Society, also previously led by Cole, also proposed implementing a “progressive city tourism charge” across the UK to raise extra funding.
The director also discussed the idea of charging an entrance fee to international tourists, but added a “few words of caution”, suggesting for instance that visitor numbers fall with charging, affecting knock-on spending in museum shops and catering. “The Treasury [also] has a nasty habit of lowering public funding as it sees self-generated income growing,” he added.
Hunt first suggested that a hotel tax should be implemented in 2018. Last July Mark Jones, the former interim director of the British Museum, said that admission fees should be introduced for overseas visitors, a move that would overturn Labour’s cornerstone policy of free admission for all to national collections. The Welsh government has also proposed implementing a tourist tax which could be introduced from 2027.