Argyll and Bute Visitor Levy

Tourism plays a key role in Argyll and Bute and we remain ambitious for the area as a top visitor destination. With growing tourism pressures and shrinking public sector budgets, we need to investigate options that could help raise income locally, sustain relevant public services impacted by the tourism industry, and make improvements to the future delivery of tourism across Argyll and Bute. We are therefore exploring opportunities from the Scottish Government Visitor Levy legislation.

This national legislation, passed in 2024, allows local authorities to introduce a charge on overnight stays in hotels and other short-term accommodations, to raise funds to support and sustain local services and infrastructure for the visitor economy and residents.

Find out more on the Visit Scotland website. For more information about the situation in Argyll and Bute please see below.

In August 2024, the council agreed to set up a Short Life Working Group to explore the proposals. A key part of this was running a pre-consultation survey to gather views to help develop a draft Visitor Levy Scheme for Argyll and Bute. Thank you to everyone who got involved. A report on the next steps is going to a meeting of the Full Council on 21 November 2024. Look out for further updates on this page.

Business workshops

Argyll and the Isles Tourism Co-operative hosted a series of online workshops from 23 October until 14 November 2024. These sessions were designed to help tourism businesses contribute to the development of the draft scheme. This was part of the pre-consultation efforts before the formal consultation process begins.