Locals from the Isle of Skye are calling for a visitor tax to reduce the number of motorhomes that come to their beautiful little island, as according to residents it is no longer sustainable. The incredible landscape and countryside in the Scottish isle attracts almost a million visitors every year, however more funding is needed to make the tourism sustainable.
Business leaders are calling for improvements to roads network and help to restore the environment in Skye to keep up with the ever-growing influx of campervans and motorhomes. To raise these funds, many residents have called for a visitor tax to be imposed on those who come to the island, to help ease the impact they can have.
SkyeConnect’s director Simon Cousins, which is the island’s destination management organisation, said: “Skye in particular has a huge infrastructure issue. The island population is about 12,000 but we get some 800,000 to one million people visiting each year.
“A lot of traffic on the roads comes from campervans and there is a feeling they spend very little in the local community. They fuel up in Inverness and Fort William on the way up.
“They’re not spending their money in Skye and at the moment they are excluded from the transient visitor levy and we believe they should be charged,” he told the MailOnline. The Highland council has recently introduced a voluntary levy, which at £40 allows campervans to park overnight in some car parks and use leisure centres for showers.
Cousins has said this is “not very helpful”, as it means the council was “essentially competing with commercial camp sites.” Instead of thi, he has said a “small tariff” imposed on vehicles entering the island would be more sustainable for the isle’s economy.
The money collated from the tariff would go towards projects that will improve the island’s infrastructure, such as upgrading roads and paths network, more public toilets, and car parks.
“From the research we have done people would be quite happy to pay very small taxes. Ten pounds to visit a unique island like Skye, I don’t think is going to put too many people off coming.
“We believe that everyone should contribute to the destination they are visiting. It’s not going to be lovely for the long-term unless we have the proper funding for destination management.” However, despite backing from locals, the tariff would have to be passed through local authority or Scottish Government level.
Jamie Halcro Johnston, who is the Conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands has said he opposes the SNP government’s latest tax on Scotland’s tourism sector, but he has “sympathy with residents and business owners”.
“They have seen a proliferation of motorhomes on the island but not the investment in local infrastructure and connectivity to sustain that. While SNP ministers in Edinburgh have been busy increasing the burden on local tourism and hospitality businesses, they have repeatedly failed to provide much-needed funding for local councils, squeezing their budgets year after year.
“That’s left Skye, and other island and rural communities, dealing with the impact of slow moving motorhomes, too many of which clog up narrow and badly maintained local roads, block lay-bys and, certainly in some cases, don’t have access to proper ways of safely disposing of waste.”