5. Statement by the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Visitor Levy Consultation

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:42 pm on 20 September 2022.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 4:42, 20 September 2022

I'm very grateful to Alun Davies for his comments and his support for the consultation that is launched today. He's absolutely right that whilst we of course want to share what we have here in Wales with people from across the globe, we also need to ensure that tourism is done in a way that is sustainable and that doesn't harm communities. And it is important to get that balance right. Also, I think this really ties into some of the work that my colleague Vaughan Gething is doing in terms of ensuring that kind of year-round tourism can grow in Wales, so that we have a better balance throughout the seasons, and we're better able to meet the expectations of people when they come to visit us here in Wales. And they will absolutely always be assured of a really warm Welsh welcome when they come to us here in Wales.

I think that the point about feeling that shared responsibility is a really important one, because when you do feel that responsibility to the community that you visit, it does give you a different emotional tie, I think, to the place in which you're taking your holiday or visiting. And I think that, for people to have an emotional tie with Wales and then leave, is a lovely thing, and they'd probably be very keen to come back to see us again. 

The voices behind me are many things; siren voices I wouldn't describe them as. But, absolutely, we'll be looking at what the evidence tells us in terms of developing the proposals for the tourism levy. We'll look really hard at what's happening in other countries. We've engaged with places such as Philadelphia in the US, for example, to get a sense of their experience. We had representatives from Amsterdam speaking at our tax conference last year. And we're learning many things from them, not only about how the taxes are developed locally, but the implementation of those taxes. We don't have to be the same as another part of the globe to learn from them in terms of implementation of taxes and delivery of taxes and so on. So, I think that the more that we can learn from other countries, the better. We have world-class tourism destinations putting in place tourism levies and it doesn't turn people off. Why don't the Conservatives have the same level of ambition for Wales to be that world-class tourism destination where people will come back to year after year?