Visitor levy: model a % overnight charge before your mayor decides

The Visitor Levy (England) Bill reached the House of Commons on 4 November 2026. It would let strategic authorities, including mayors, charge a local tax on overnight stays. England is the frame: the Bill title says so, and GOV.UK presents it as bringing England into line with other destinations. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not covered by this Bill.

We do not wait for a rate card to land before we model. A consultation will ask for views after a draft plan and impact assessment are published. The operators who arrive with worked numbers get heard.

What the Bill actually sets out

From the GOV.UK announcement and the parliamentary Bill page:

• The levy is a percentage of the cost of accommodation, not a flat fee per night. Cheaper rooms pay less in cash.
• It applies only to the first 28 consecutive days of a stay. Longer stays count as long-term accommodation.
• Meals and other non-accommodation charges are excluded from the levy base. That matters for packages.
• Hotels and other accommodation providers account for and pay the levy. Government will publish guidance on register, pay and report. Providers can collect it through a booking platform or agent.
• Before a levy is introduced or raised, the authority must publish a draft plan and impact assessment, then consult local people and businesses, seek the necessary agreement inside the Strategic Authority, consider the responses, and publish final documents.
• Exemptions set out for this England Bill cover student accommodation, care homes, children's homes and school boarding houses. Temporary accommodation, shelters and refuges are not charged. Occasional hosts only face the levy above a threshold still to be set; local leaders can adjust that threshold.
• Ten mayors have committed that any levy in their areas would be no higher than 5%. That is a mayoral pledge, not a statutory cap written into the England Bill. Trade reporting notes the Bill itself does not hard-cap the rate. We model 5% as a planning ceiling used by those mayors, not as a legal maximum across England.

Whether VAT sits on the levy itself is not confirmed in the GOV.UK material checked for this draft. We leave that as a guidance point and do not invent a treatment.

Work two stays at an illustrative 5%

Every room rate and package figure below is illustrative. We use 5% because that is the figure ten mayors have pledged as their local ceiling. Replace both the rate and the percentage with your own draft plan numbers when they appear.

Mid-week room

Illustrative mid-week room rate: £95 for accommodation only, one night.

1. Accommodation base: £95.
2. Levy at 5%: £95 × 0.05 = £4.75.
3. Guest accommodation line before any VAT treatment of the levy: £95 + £4.75 = £99.75.

If the guest stays 3 mid-week nights at the same rate: 3 × £4.75 = £14.25 levy. All three nights sit inside the first 28 consecutive days.

Weekend package

Illustrative weekend package listed as: room £140 + breakfast £25 = £165 total guest-facing price for one night.

1. Levy base is accommodation only: £140.
2. Breakfast stays outside the base: £25.
3. Levy at 5%: £140 × 0.05 = £7.00.
4. Guest total if the levy is shown separately: £140 + £7.00 + £25 = £172.00.

If someone wrongly levied the whole £165 package: £165 × 0.05 = £8.25. That is £1.25 too much on this illustration. We train the front desk and the channel manager on the split before any go-live.

Occupancy stress (still illustrative)

Assume 40 mid-week room nights and 30 weekend package nights in a sample week, all inside the first 28 nights of each stay:

1. Mid-week levy: 40 × £4.75 = £190.
2. Weekend levy: 30 × £7.00 = £210.
3. Weekly levy collected: £190 + £210 = £400.

That £400 is cash we must account for and pay over. It is not margin. Cash timing, booking-engine setup and who remits when an online travel agency (OTA) collects need answering in the consultation.

Consultation response checklist

We write the response against the published draft plan and impact assessment, not against a rumour. Use this checklist:

• Confirm whether our sites sit inside the named strategic authority boundary.
• State the accommodation products we sell (rooms, apartments, packages) and how breakfast, dinner and spa charges are invoiced today.
• Attach illustrative workings at the proposed percentage for a mid-week room and a weekend package, with and without breakfast split out.
• Ask how the first 28 consecutive nights will be measured across multi-site bookings and stay extensions.
• Ask how OTA, package and group contracts should show and remit the levy.
• Flag VAT treatment of the levy as unconfirmed and ask for worked examples in the final guidance.
• List systems work: property management system (PMS), channel manager, point of sale, invoices and month-end control account.
• Estimate staff hours for registration, returns and guest queries in the first 90 days.
• Comment on the proposed rate, threshold, exemptions and how the money will be spent, with evidence of guest price sensitivity where we have it.
• Request the annual reporting format so we can reconcile what we paid to what the authority says it raised.

What we do this week

We build one spreadsheet tab with our real mid-week rate and weekend package split, run 3%, 5% and 7% columns, and park the file ready for the draft plan. When the consultation opens, we paste the numbers into the response rather than starting from a blank page.