The Highland Council has agreed to consult on a Highlands tourist tax of £5 per room, per night, a charge that would fall on every company booking accommodation in one of Scotland’s largest and busiest visitor regions. A statutory twelve-week public consultation opens in early September, the most significant step the region has taken towards a visitor levy of its own.
For travel managers, the detail that matters most is the structure. The Council is proposing a tiered, fixed-rate charge rather than a percentage of the room cost, so the amount added to a bill will not move with the nightly rate. A four-night working trip would attract £20 per traveller whether the booking is a modest guest house or a city-centre hotel.
What the Highlands tourist tax would cost
Under the draft scheme, hotels, guest houses, B and Bs, short-term lets and similar accommodation would sit in the £5 per room, per night band. Hostels, campsites and caravan parks would be charged £2 per night. The Council estimates the levy could raise around £9 million a year, earmarked for tourism infrastructure, community projects and visitor services, all of them under strain from rising visitor numbers.
The move follows Edinburgh’s decision to introduce the UK’s first city-wide visitor levy, and it lands as the same debate spreads south of the border, with English mayors in line to gain overnight stay tax powers. Corporate travel is not carved out of any of these schemes, which is why business travel leaders have called for an exemption from overnight charges on work trips.
Concessions shaped by the accommodation sector
Industry feedback has already changed the proposal. Accommodation providers would be allowed to keep five per cent of the levy they collect to cover the administrative burden, and December, January and February would be exempt entirely to protect businesses through the quieter trading months.
That winter exemption is worth noting for anyone planning a travel budget. Nine months of the year would carry the charge, and the three that do not are precisely the months when many firms schedule internal meetings, training and site visits in the Highlands to take advantage of lower room rates. Companies with flexibility over timing have a straightforward way to avoid the cost altogether.
What happens next for travel budgets
Councillor Bill Lobban, Convener of The Highland Council, said the levy could become a “new source of controlled funding” that supports communities directly and improves the visitor experience, while acknowledging the difficulty of balancing industry concerns against practical implementation. He stressed that no final decision has been taken and that the consultation will shape whatever policy emerges. At this stage no decision has been made to introduce a visitor levy in Highland.
If the scheme survives consultation, it returns to Full Council for a final vote in December 2026, followed by an eighteen-month implementation period before the charge takes effect. That timetable gives finance and procurement teams a long runway, but it is not an excuse to ignore it. Booking tools, hotel rate cards and expense policies all need to reflect a per-night charge that sits outside the negotiated room rate, and travel managers who have already worked through the Edinburgh scheme know the reconciliation work involved.
Full details of the draft scheme and the consultation are published by The Highland Council, and the powers behind it sit with the Scottish Government’s local visitor levy policy, which allows any Scottish council to apply a charge on overnight stays. With Edinburgh already committed and the Highlands now consulting, UK firms should plan on the assumption that overnight levies become a standard line in Scottish travel costs rather than a local exception.
