The tourist tax table: what cities actually charge in 2026

The short answer

The “tourist tax” is now a real line in a hotel bill across Europe and increasingly elsewhere, and the amount varies by more than an order of magnitude depending on how a city writes the law. At one end, Paris charges €0.65 to €15.60 per person per night, tiered by accommodation class. At the other, Amsterdam charges 12.5% of the room rate excluding VAT — the single largest rate on this list, and it scales with how expensive your hotel is rather than how many nights you stay. In between, Edinburgh levies a flat 5% of paid overnight accommodation, Berlin charges 7.5%, and Barcelona stacks a regional tax plus a €5 per-person municipal surcharge.

Three findings matter more than the numbers. First, the aggregators are wrong on at least one major city: Venice’s own Comune states that the 2026 access-fee trial has ended and that from 27 July 2026 no payment is required to visit the city — yet multiple 2026 listicles still list the fee as live. Second, the UK’s first overnight levy is already operating in Edinburgh (since 24 July 2026) while national legislation to let English mayors charge a percentage-based levy is still fighting through Parliament and has drawn hospitality-industry backlash. And Tokyo’s accommodation tax becomes a flat 3% of the nightly rate on 1 April 2027, replacing a ¥100/¥200 fee most travellers never notice — triple the current cost on a mid-range room, and a move from a flat fee to a percentage that will reshape 2027 budgets. All three are cases where a reader booking on a listicle would be wrong.

What a “tourist tax” actually is

The phrase covers at least four different things, and most confusing coverage blends them. Getting this straight is what makes the table below readable:

Type	What it is	Who sets it	Example
Statutory per-night city tax	A fixed € amount per person per night, tiered by hotel class	The city	Paris
Percentage accommodation tax	A % of the room rate, excluding VAT	The city	Amsterdam, Berlin
Regional + municipal surcharge	A national/regional tax plus a city add-on	Two levels of government	Barcelona
Flat levy on a % of the stay	A % capped at N nights	The city	Edinburgh
Not a tourist tax	Sales tax / VAT on the room	National tax authority	New York City

The last row is the trap. New York City, the most expensive city for most US travellers, has no tourist tax at all — what it has is a $1.50 per unit per day NYC unit fee plus state and local sales tax charged on rooms over $2/day. Calling that a “tourist tax” is wrong, and budget posts that do conflate them overstate what a New York trip costs in this category.

The table: fifteen cities, sourced to official pages

Every rate below is taken from a city, tourism-board or tax-authority page, accessed 29 September 2026. Where I could not reach an official page, the row says so rather than substituting a travel blog.

City	Charge	Basis	Official source
Paris	€0.65 – €15.60 per person per night	Tiered by class: palaces €15.60; 5★ €11.38; 4★ €8.45; 3★ €5.53; 2★ €3.25; 1★/B&B/hostel €2.60; unclassified = 5% of the night, capped €15.60	Paris je t’aime
Amsterdam	12.5% of the overnight price (excl. VAT); day-visitor rate €15/cruise passenger	Percentage — no cap, no per-night tier	City of Amsterdam
Edinburgh	5% of paid overnight accommodation	Charged before VAT, not on extras; first 5 nights only; from 24 July 2026	Edinburgh City Council
Berlin	7.5% of the net overnight price	Raised from 7% on 1 Jan 2025; the >21-stay exemption was removed	Berlin Senate
Barcelona	Catalonia IEET (per person/night, tiered, max 7 nights) + €5 per person per stay municipal surcharge	Two-tier: regional tax + city surcharge; 25% of IEET goes to housing policy	Barcelona City Council
New York City	No tourist tax. $1.50/unit/day unit fee + state/local sales tax	Not a tourist levy — a unit fee plus sales tax	NY Dept of Taxation
Tokyo	¥100–¥200 per person per night now — 3% of the nightly rate from 1 April 2027	Current: flat tier on the per-person nightly price (under ¥10,000 exempt). From 1 Apr 2027 it becomes a 3% percentage, under ¥13,000 exempt, extended to minshuku and Airbnb	Tokyo Metropolitan Tax Bureau
Venice	Access fee no longer in effect from 27 July 2026	2026 trial ended; overnight tourist tax separate	Comune di Venezia
Prague	50 Kč per person per started night (arrival day exempt); ~$2	Single citywide rate, municipal	Praha 7 city district
Budapest	4% of the fee for the started guest-night	A percentage, not a flat rate — every district levies 4%	District XIII, stating the 2025 rate under decree 31/2010
Rome	€3.50–€10.00 per person per night, by class: hostel €3.50 · 1★ €4 · 2★ €5 · 3★/B&B €6 · 4★ €7.50 · 5★+ €10	Star rating + property type; capped at 10 nights/property/yr	Roma Capitale
Athens (and all Greece)	Climate-crisis resilience fee (Τ.Α.Κ.Κ.) — replaced the accommodation tax (φόρος διαμονής), charged per room per night, not per person	National, AADE-administered, season-split	AADE
Lisbon	€4.00 per guest per night, max 7 nights, guests 13+	Municipal; cruise arrivals €2.00	Câmara Municipal de Lisboa
Dubrovnik	€2.65/person/night (Apr–Sep), €1.85 rest of year; camping €1.95/€1.30	Season split, not star rating; set by Dubrovnik-Neretva County	County Assembly decision 2026
Mexico City	3.5% of the lodging consideration; 5% where an intermediary/OTA collects	City tax, rate varies by payer	CDMX Fiscal Code art. 164
Kraków	No tourist tax exists	—	Krakow Convention Bureau (official, 29 Apr 2026)
Seoul, London	Not yet sourced — see note	—	—

Two cities remain unsourced and are named as such rather than filled in: Seoul and London. No first-party rate page was reachable for either. For Seoul that is a retrieval problem, not an absence — the accommodation tax (숙박세) is a district ordinance published through Seoul’s legal portal, and that page renders its article text only under JavaScript. For London the answer is genuinely that no levy is in force: national legislation to let mayors charge a percentage of the stay is still before Parliament and facing hospitality-industry backlash, so a London stay carries no overnight visitor levy today. The Greater London Act gives boroughs discretionary power to levy up to 3% on accommodation, but I found no first-party page stating a live London rate, so I have not published one.

The five findings that change how you budget

1. Three cities charge a percentage, and that changes the arithmetic

Amsterdam’s official page is unambiguous: 12.5% of the overnight price, excluding VAT, plus a €15 per-passenger day rate for cruise day-visits. There is no per-person-per-night tier and no cap. Budapest is the third percentage city, and almost nobody describes it that way. Budapest District XIII’s official page states the idegenforgalmi adó as 4% of the fee for the started guest-night under decree 31/2010, and every district levies the same 4%. One caveat worth stating: that page labels the figure as the 2025 rate, and I did not find a first-party page restating it for 2026. Budapest’s central tax portal does not publish the accommodation-tax rate at all. Treat 4% as the current published figure with a one-year-old stamp, and re-check before a 2027 trip. Coverage that lists a per-night HUF figure for Budapest is converting the percentage at some assumed room price. Budget the percentage.

So the percentage-tax class is: Amsterdam 12.5% · Berlin 7.5% · Budapest 4%, with Mexico City joining on a different basis (3.5% of the lodging consideration, rising to 5% when an OTA or intermediary collects it — so booking direct is cheaper on this line alone).

This matters because a lot of 2026 coverage presents Amsterdam as either “€18 a night per person” or “12.5%,” and treats them as a conflict to reconcile. They are not a conflict — the €18 is roughly what 12.5% works out to on a mid-range room. The percentage is the statutory basis, and it is the number to budget, because it grows when you book a nicer hotel while a flat per-night fee would not.

2. Venice’s access fee is over

This is the clearest case of listicles being out of date. The Comune di Venezia’s own access-fee page states: “The trial period for the access fee in 2026 has ended. Therefore, starting from July 27, the access fee is no longer in effect, and it is possible to visit Venice without any payment or request for exemption.” Multiple widely-read 2026 “new tourist taxes” articles still present the Venice day-tripper fee as current. It is not. (Venice still has a separate overnight tourist tax — that’s unchanged — but the headline access fee is gone.)

3. Edinburgh is the template Britain may copy

Edinburgh’s levy is the UK’s first overnight visitor levy: 5% of paid accommodation, before VAT, capped at the first five nights, in force since 24 July 2026, at the same rate every day of the year. There is a grandfathering clause worth knowing: stays on or after 24 July 2026 that were booked and paid for before 1 October 2025 are exempt. That is an unusual detail that almost no consumer coverage mentions. Nationally, ministers are pushing to let mayors charge a percentage-of-stay levy, and the Guardian reported on 10 September 2026 that the hospitality industry is mounting a backlash — so the direction of travel in the UK is toward Amsterdam-style percentage levies, not flat ones.

4. Tokyo is about to become a percentage-tax city

This is the finding most likely to change a number you budgeted. The Tokyo Metropolitan Tax Bureau states the current accommodation tax as a flat tier on the per-person nightly price — ¥100 for a room from ¥10,000 to ¥15,000, ¥200 at ¥15,000 or above, with anything under ¥10,000 exempt. On a typical Tokyo hotel that is a rounding error, which is why almost nobody mentions it.

The same page then states what happens next: from 1 April 2027 (令和9年4月1日) the tax becomes 3% of the per-person nightly rate, with stays under ¥13,000 exempt, and the scope widens to cover minshuku and both Airbnb licensing categories. On a ¥20,000 room that is ¥600 a night instead of ¥200 — triple the current cost, and a structural shift from a flat fee to a percentage that puts Tokyo in Amsterdam’s company. Anyone booking a long Tokyo stay for 2027 or later should budget it now.

5. A “no tourist tax” city is a genuine line in a cost comparison

Kraków is the cleanest example, because its “no tax” status is confirmed by the city itself rather than inferred from silence. The Krakow Convention Bureau states plainly that Polish law currently contains no provision for a typical tourist tax, and that Kraków itself collected the old local fee from 2004 to 2015 before it was abolished — the city no longer met the statutory climate criteria. A negative finding from an official source is stronger evidence than a missing row.

Several of the destinations this site covers in depth levy no accommodation tax at all. Taiwan levies no accommodation tax, no city visitor tax and no departure levy. Korea has no per-night tourist tax. When you stack a seven-night stay, the difference is the whole line: at Paris’s 3-star rate (€5.53/person/night) two people pay €77.40 for the week, whereas a tax-free city costs €0. If you are choosing between two otherwise similar trips, “which of these cities taxes my hotel room” is a legitimate tiebreaker.

The trap: mixing taxes up

The most common error in travel-cost coverage is calling a sales tax a tourist tax. In New York, for example, there is no visitor levy — but rooms over $2/day carry state and local sales tax plus a $1.50-per-unit-per-day city unit fee. A post that lists a 14.875% “NYC hotel tax” is blending a sales tax, the unit fee and city/state sales taxes into one number that exists nowhere on any bill. The official state guidance is explicit that the unit fee is separate from sales tax and not subject to it. Getting this right is the difference between a real receipt and a confident-sounding guess.

Bottom line

• Budget the percentage where there is one. Amsterdam (12.5%), Berlin (7.5%) and Budapest (4%) scale with your room price; a flat fee does not, so the expensive-hotel trip pays more. In Mexico City the rate itself changes by booking channel — 3.5% direct, 5% via an intermediary.
• Check for caps. Paris caps the unclassified rate at €15.60; Edinburgh caps at five nights. Both mean a long or luxury stay is not taxed linearly.
• Distrust listicles on anything enacted this year. Venice’s fee ended mid-2026 and most coverage missed it.
• A tax-free city is worth real money over a week. Two people in a 3-star Paris hotel pay €77 in city tax for seven nights; in Taipei or Seoul that line is zero.
• If you are booking Tokyo for 2027 or later, budget 3% of the room rate — the flat ¥100/¥200 fee is going away on 1 April 2027.
• Two cities are still unsourced and labelled as such: Seoul and London. For London the honest answer is that no levy is in force. For Seoul it is a retrieval problem — the ordinance is JavaScript-rendered. If you want either closed, say which and I’ll keep at it.

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See also: our True Cost Calculator for the hidden-fee ledger, the Barcelona guide and Busan guide for city-level cost detail, and the true-cost pillar post for the broader hidden-cost framework this table belongs to.