London needs a tourist tax

10 April 2025, 14:02

I’m writing this from Leicester Square.

To get into work today, I slalomed through a school trip from Europe, ducked and rolled beneath selfie sticks, and excuse me sorry’d my way through a large family standing in the middle of the pavement.

Like the London Eye and Big Ben, it’s become an attraction in itself: the Group of People Standing Right in Front of You in the Middle of the Pavement. We can work on the name.

But every Londoner knows what I’m talking about. The tourists. Blocking the path. Sometimes not even to check directions or take pictures. Just contemplating, existing, frozen like a family computer.

London needs a tourist tax. Tourism hasn’t just recovered since COVID-19; we’re heading for over-tourism by 2035. That’s 25 million tourists, a 3:1 tourist-to-Londoner ratio.

And a tax is the most humane way of deterring them. Barcelona sprayed tourists with water pistols. Amsterdam ran ads warning Brits to ‘stay away’. A tax is practically a love-in.

You could argue Barcelona and Amsterdam have it worse. Barcelona averages 20 tourists for every resident. But I’ve been to Barca. There wasn’t a Group of People Standing Right in Front of You in the Middle of the Pavement. So London has it worse, actually.

If tourists were charged £1 per person, per night, we could raise £420 million a year. That could contribute to cleaner streets, more police, and a few genuinely affordable homes. Nice ideas, aren’t they?

They’re also boring. The truth is that a tourist tax is simply great vibes. It’s a stand against London’s final descent into a commercial playground where you shuffle down the high street behind a confused conga of tourists, only to get run over by a neon pedicab blasting Pitbull.

And before you get off your Brompton and swat me with your issue of the Guardian, I’m not against tourists. I just don’t like it when they block pavements, escalators, doorways, or any space that could be used for entering and exiting. But really, it’s not their fault.

London is manufactured for the long weekend, a city that trades on an image of heritage and grandeur but is saturated and skint - a Disneyland with rubbish weather and a few M&M stores. It’s not too late to save London.

A tourist tax is the essential first step - and even if it isn’t, it might at least clear Leicester Square so I can get home after work.

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