One of Britain’s best known hotel tycoons has condemned plans for new tourist taxes across Scotland , warning the move will damage tourism and encourage visitors to head to England instead. In what represents the fiercest criticism yet of the tourist tax plans, Sir Rocco Forte has backed calls for local authorities to boycott the levies, and called on everyone invested in Scotland’s tourism industry to rally together to “kill this stealth tax at birth.” Advertisement Advertisement Sign up to our Politics newsletter Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.
The chairman of the eponymous hotel group, which includes The Balmoral on Edinburgh’s Princes Street, condemned the planned introduction of the levies as “bad for jobs” and “bad for economic growth”, characterising the levies as a “very high risk” strategy at a time when Scotland’s tourism sector is still recovering from the impact of the pandemic. In an article published exclusively in The Scotsman, the 79-year-old accused Holyrood of passing the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Bill with “little or no consideration of the real world impact”, and argued it would also discourage domestic visitors from choosing staycations – a move that would “further depress spending in Scotland”. Under the legislation, which was pas.