Paradise lost: Tourist taxes and the price of visiting beautiful places

There is a strong argument that tourists should contribute towards maintaining the places they enjoy. Properly designed taxes can raise substantial sums for conservation, infrastructure and public services. But revenue raised is not an environmental outcome and its what happens afterwards is real the problem

Tourist taxes are not absolution for travelling. They are not proof that tourism has become sustainable. And they are certainly not a licence for unlimited growth. They are simply one way of making those of us fortunate enough to travel contribute towards the places we enjoy. Picture: iStock

There was a time when the unpleasant surprises on a holiday bill were fairly predictable. Such as excess baggage charges, airport sandwiches priced like luxury goods, or discovering that five minutes from the beach was apparently measured by helicopter. Now there is another increasingly common extra, which is a charge for the environment you have travelled to see.

Tourist taxes are cropping up from Venice to New Zealand. On the face of it, the logic is hard to argue with. Tourists put pressure on places, so tourists should help pay to protect them. And there is plenty to pay for. Tourism is often treated as a relatively benign industry because its environmental impacts are less visible than a factory chimney or an open-cast mine. But a 2024 study in Nature Communications estimated that tourism was responsible for around 5.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions in 2019, equivalent to roughly 8.8% of the global total. More strikingly, tourism emissions grew by around 3.5% a year between 2009 and 2019, twice the rate of growth in emissions from the global economy. In other words, we have become somewhat better at travelling efficiently, but much better at travelling more. And carbon is only part of the story. Tourists use water and energy, generate waste and sewage, put pressure on roads and public transport and, understandably enough, tend to congregate in some of the world's most beautiful and environmentally sensitive places.