One trip, nine places: 7 nights, 2 adults, a €150 room. Fees alone run from €15 in Bali to €147 in Hawaii. Bhutan charges €1,230.
Book the same week in nine places and the fees alone swing from €15 to €147. Bhutan, which plays a different game, charges €1,230.
The trip is deliberately boring: two adults, one hotel room at €150 a night (VAT included, tourist taxes not), seven nights. Every line below is a fee you pay because you are a visitor, not a general sales tax a local would also pay. I priced each one with the rules in force this month.
The ledger
| Destination | How it's charged | Per night, room | Nights taxed | Per-trip fees | 7-night total | % of room bill |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bhutan | US$100 per person per night | €175.75 | 7 | none | €1,230 | 117% |
| Hawaii (O'ahu) | 11% state + 3% county | €21.00 | 7 | none | €147 | 14.0% |
| Barcelona | €8.40 pp (4-star) | €16.80 | 7 | none | €118 | 11.2% |
| Amsterdam | 12.5% of ex-VAT price | €15.50 | 7 | none | €108 | 10.3% |
| Kyoto | ¥400 pp (tier 2) | €4.44 | 7 | ¥3,000 pp departure tax | €64 | 6.1% |
| Venice | €4.50 pp (4-star) | €9.00 | 5 | none | €45 | 4.3% |
| Edinburgh | 5% of ex-VAT price | €6.25 | 5 | none | €31 | 3.0% |
| Tromsø (from 2027) | up to 3% | up to €4.50 | 7 | none | ≤€32 | ≤3.0% |
| Bali | flat levy | none | n/a | IDR 150,000 pp | €15 | 1.4% |
Method: room bill = €150 × 7 = €1,050. FX mid-market on 24 September 2026: €1 = US$1.138 = ¥180.3 = IDR 20,254. Bhutan: $100 × 2 × 7 = $1,400 = €1,230. Hawaii: 14% × €150 × 7 = €147 (the 4.712% O'ahu general excise tax is excluded because residents pay it too; include it and Hawaii passes €190). Barcelona: €8.40 × 2 × 7 = €117.60. Amsterdam: €150 ÷ 1.21 × 12.5% × 7 = €108.47. Kyoto: ¥400 × 2 × 7 = ¥5,600 (€31.06) plus ¥3,000 × 2 = ¥6,000 (€33.28). Venice: €4.50 × 2 × 5 = €45. Edinburgh: €150 ÷ 1.2 × 5% × 5 = €31.25. Tromsø: 3% × €150 × 7 = €31.50 ceiling. Bali: IDR 300,000 = €14.81.
Two of the four most expensive rows are percentage taxes. Bhutan is a special case. Barcelona is the most instructive row on the table.
Flat per-person taxes land hardest on the cheap room
Barcelona's charge does not care what you paid. Since 1 April 2026 the Catalan tax on a four-star hotel has doubled to €3.40, and the city surcharge has gone from €4 to €5, so every adult pays €8.40 a night whether the room was €150 or €450. A youth hostel bed still costs €6 a night in tax. The surcharge is scheduled to rise by €1 a year until it reaches €8 in 2029. Under-16s are exempt, which is the only discount on offer.
Percentage taxes scale with the bill. Flat taxes scale with headcount. That makes a flat tax regressive by construction, and cities that pitch it as a fairness measure against overtourism should be asked why the backpacker pays a bigger share than the suite guest.
Run the per-person nightly fee against the mid-tier daily spend per person in our country-costs dataset:
| City | Tax per person per night | Country mid-tier daily spend | Tax as % of a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barcelona, 4-star | US$9.56 | US$59 (Spain) | 16.2% |
| Barcelona, hostel (vs survival tier) | US$6.83 | US$39 (Spain) | 17.5% |
| Venice, 4-star | US$5.12 | US$68 (Italy) | 7.5% |
| Kyoto, tier 2 | US$2.52 | US$49 (Japan) | 5.1% |
| Edinburgh | US$3.56 | US$117 (UK) | 3.0% |
The data covers countries, not cities, so Barcelona's real daily spend is likely above the Spanish average and the 16% overstates it somewhat. The hostel row survives any correction: a traveller living on Spain's survival-tier budget loses about one day's spending in six to the tax.
Kyoto built a staircase with a cliff at the top
Kyoto went the other way. From 1 March 2026 its accommodation tax is set by the room charge per person per night, in five bands:
| Room charge per person per night | Tax per person per night | Effective rate at the band floor |
|---|---|---|
| under ¥6,000 | ¥200 | n/a |
| ¥6,000–19,999 | ¥400 | 6.7% |
| ¥20,000–49,999 | ¥1,000 | 5.0% |
| ¥50,000–99,999 | ¥4,000 | 8.0% |
| ¥100,000 and up | ¥10,000 | 10.0% |
The old top rate was ¥1,000. The new one is ten times that, and it only touches people paying ¥100,000 a head. Our ¥27,045 room for two works out at ¥13,523 each, squarely in band two.
I like the design and I would defend it to any hotelier: the people who can most afford the tax pay the most, in yen and in percentage. The flaw is the cliffs. A guest paying ¥99,999 per person pays ¥4,000; one yen more and it is ¥10,000. At the ¥50,000 line the jump is from ¥1,000 to ¥4,000. Expect a lot of luxury rates priced at ¥49,800 and ¥98,000 next spring.
Then Japan charges you to leave. The international tourist tax, collected inside the air or ferry fare, tripled from ¥1,000 to ¥3,000 for departures from 1 July 2026, per the Japan Tourism Agency. For our couple that single line (€33) is bigger than a week of Kyoto's hotel tax (€31). See the Japan guide for timing.
The caps do more work than the rates
Edinburgh's 5% levy, the UK's first, started on 24 July 2026. It is charged on the price before VAT and stops after five consecutive nights, per the City of Edinburgh Council. Venice's hotel tax also stops at five. Catalonia stops at seven.
For a seven-night trip, that means two of the seven Edinburgh and Venice nights are untaxed, a 29% discount on the fee that no brochure mentions. Stay 14 nights in Edinburgh and the levy works out to 1.5% of the room bill. The longer you stay, the more these cities agree with you that you are not really a tourist.
Amsterdam has no cap. It also got more expensive through a door that is not a tourist tax at all: Dutch VAT on hotel rooms rose from 9% to 21% on 1 January 2026 (business.gov.nl). Because the 12.5% city tax is charged on the ex-VAT price, the VAT hike did not raise the tourist tax. It raised everything around it.
Fees that never reach the hotel bill
Bali's levy is IDR 150,000 per foreign visitor per trip, paid through the provincial Love Bali portal. That is under €7.50 each, the cheapest line in the ledger, and after two years of honour-system collection it is now being spot-checked at sites like Tanah Lot and Uluwatu. Indonesia's guide has the dry-season months.
Venice's access fee does not appear in the table because overnight guests are exempt. It applied to day-trippers on 60 dates between 3 April and 26 July 2026: €5 booked four or more days ahead, €10 after that. A day-tripper couple who booked late paid €20 for seven and a half hours of charged time. That is more than two nights of four-star hotel tax.
Galápagos charges foreign adults a US$200 national-park fee plus a US$20 transit card. Pre-arrival authorisations belong on the same list: the ETA toll booths we priced in July add £16 for the UK and US$40 for the US before you reach any hotel.
Bhutan stands apart. Its Sustainable Development Fee is US$100 per person per night until 31 August 2027, down from US$200. On our budget the fee costs more than the room.
That is the policy, not a side effect.
Norway passed a law and nobody is collecting yet
Several 2026 roundups told readers Norway would charge 3% from this summer. The law did enter into force on 1 July 2026, but it only lets municipalities apply, and each needs ministry approval plus a local regulation. Tromsø voted on 24 June to start on 1 January 2027. The Lofoten municipalities are approved pilots with no collection date I could confirm. As of this month a week in Norway costs €0 in tourist tax, which is why the Tromsø row above is marked 2027.
If you are pricing a trip in euros, the exchange-rate ledger moves the same totals from the other side: in our August numbers a euro bought 7.2% more yen than a year earlier. Compare the destinations side by side before you let a tax decide anything.
Sources and verification: every rate above was checked in September 2026 against official notices or reporting that cites them, with at least two sources per figure. Authorities: Kyoto City, Japan Tourism Agency, City of Edinburgh Council, Barcelona City Council, Comune di Venezia access-fee site, City of Amsterdam, Hawaii Department of Taxation and City & County of Honolulu, Love Bali, Tourism Council of Bhutan. Independent reports: Travel Voice, Catalan News, Forbes, TravelMole, Kyoto hotel rate notices. Exchange rates are mid-market on 24 September 2026. Daily spend figures come from our country-costs dataset. Hotel categories and room prices change what you pay: check your booking's tax line.