The money raised from a new tourist tax to be introduced on June 1 would be ring-fenced in a fund administered by an independent trust, Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis said yesterday.
Tourists will be charged a 50c tax per night, capped at €5. The tax will be collected by anyone offering accommodation to tourists, including hotels, farmhouses and host families. This was being done to ensure a level playing field for all accommodation service providers, Dr Zammit Lewis said.
The tourism minister pledged that the government would continue to crackdown on all non-licensed accommodation.
The tax was expected to raise around €6 million annually based on current projections, Dr Zammit Lewis said, to be spent on embellishment projects in tourist zones.
The main difficulty is the method of collection
It will be administered by an independent trust composed of government and MHRA representatives, and chaired by architect Joe Cassar.
Addressing a press conference yesterday, Dr Zammit Lewis said the tax was not meant to raise revenue for the government but rather to improve the service offered to tourists as part of a wider plan to improve Malta’s tourism product.
The tax was initially supposed to be introduced on April 1 but was postponed by a few months following confusion in the tourism industry about to how it was to be collected.
Dr Zammit Lewis admitted that there were still some issues with certain stakeholders, particularly the federation of language schools (Feltom).
“The main difficulty is the method of collection. We are still open to reaching some agreement with Feltom about this.
“Would it be easier for language schools to collect the tax? Well, it depends how you look at it. If the principle is that the accommodation service provider has to collect it, then the onus is on the host families and not the language schools. It is not easy; we have given host families the option of delegating the collection of the tax,” he said.
Dr Zammit Lewis said Feltom agreed with the tax in principle, adding, however, that the exact details still needed to be worked out.
The government wants to attract more students to Malta and has, therefore, exempted all people under the age of 18 from paying it.
MHRA CEO Andrew Agius Muscat explained that the tax would be invoiced separately from the room fees.