Travellers will have to pay holiday tax for up to a month while Airbnb owners face £500 fines for not keeping records under Labour plans

Published: 13:08 EDT, 4 November 2026 | Updated: 13:43 EDT, 4 November 2026 Holidaymakers and business travellers will be forced to pay Andy Burnham’s hated holiday tax for up to a month, the Government has revealed.Legislation published yesterday laid bare the full horrors of the Prime Minister’s plan - which will also see local authorities given HMRC-style snooping powers to check whether tax is owed. And accommodation owners, including those with Airbnbs and guest houses, face a £500 fine for not keeping records of their guests.Under the plans, regional mayors will be given the power to impose an unlimited Overnight Visitor Levy on stays all year round in hotels and B&Bs.The charge will be a percentage rate of the cost of accommodation, rather than as a flat fee, with Labour-run areas likely to set it at 5per cent.Ministers said the fees could be reinvested locally in high streets, public spaces and tourist attractions, but there will be no legal requirement to do so.The first 28 days of a continuous stay will be chargeable - whereas in Edinburgh, where a visitor levy already applies, it is capped at a maximum of five consecutive nights.People who only rent out a spare room occasionally will pay the levy if they earn above a set amount, with local leaders able to adjust this threshold to reflect the local tourism market. The mayor of London lobbied for the tax, but hospitality groups say it will hike the cost of a family holidayThe levy was welcomed by Labour mayors, including London’s Sadiq Khan who said it would give the capital ‘greater freedom to raise and invest new funding locally’.But UKHospitality warned that families would be forced to pay more for their holidays just to ‘prop up local government finances’.Allen Simpson, the trade body’s chief executive, said: ‘It’s genuinely shocking to see the Government bring forward legislation to hike the cost of a family holiday and risk 33,000 jobs, because that’s exactly what its Holiday Tax Bill will do.‘Mayors will be able to introduce an uncapped holiday tax on Brits and then spend the funds on whatever they like, with no legal requirements to even use the funds to benefit hospitality.‘It is hard-working families that will be forced to pay more for their summer break to prop up local government finances. It is people in coastal and rural communities that rely on hospitality and tourism who will lose their jobs.‘It is not normal to have this level of taxation on a holiday. The UK’s 20per cent VAT is already the third highest in Europe, and this holiday tax will make it even worse.’And the Tories said it would hit 'the very people who can least afford to pay more for a break'.Shadow communities minister David Simmonds said: 'It is absurd that Scout camps, Guides and Duke of Edinburgh expeditions could be caught up in the tax designed for commercial overnight stays, even when activities are run by volunteers and charities on shoestring budgets.'This is yet another example of Labour making everyday life more expensive for ordinary people.'Mr Burnham introduced the UK’s first holiday tax when he was Greater Manchester Mayor, imposing a £1 plus VAT City Visitor Charge per room, per night in 2023 while his close ally Steve Rotherham set a £2 rate in Liverpool last year.A 5per cent charge took effect in Edinburgh at the start of the summer, for stays of up to five nights, while a Visitor Levy of £1.30 per night is coming to Cardiff from April.But the plans announced by the Government in September go further by giving England’s 14 regional mayors the power to introduce an uncapped Overnight Visitor Levy to the whole of their areas from 2028.Angela Rayner, Housing, Communities, and Local Government Secretary, said: ‘This is about giving mayors and local leaders the choice to invest back into what matters most to local people, while protecting lower-cost stays and making sure businesses have their say.’