Dublin city tourist tax of up to €5 per night being considered

James Cox

Dublin City Council is considering a tourist tax of up to €5 per night at Dublin hotels.

An analysis found a €2 tax could be worth up to €17.5 million a year. However, a charging structure based on hotel stars is also under consideration.

Twenty-one of the 27 EU member states have tourist tax fees on hotels.

Ross Curley, head of the council’s economic development office, told the council's finance committee: "The three core ways of charging are per person per night, per room per night, or a percentage of the room rate. All these come with different permutations and outcomes from the perspective of revenue collection and the complexity of how they might be collected.”

He added: "Obviously this is just one of the options, but it allows you to plan, based on 80 per cent-plus occupancy,” he said. “It gets a bit more complicated when you get into dynamic pricing – with the percentage, it’s going to vary widely and might be that bit harder to plan ahead. But obviously, that would be a much larger figure.”