Are tourists turned into cash cows in Africa?

CASH STRAPPED ZANZIBAR GOVERNMENT NOW HITS TOURIST WITH MORE TAXES WITH BUT A FEW DAYS NOTICE

(Posted 27th June 2015)

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Targeting tourists and airline passengers for taxes has become sort of fashionable in recent years and examples gone woefully wrong, like the ticket taxes in the UK, show how often immediately the market reacts to such blatant attempts to siphon money out of travelers pockets.

Worse, when combined with the pretense it is a green tax do such governments, councils and cities only lose the last bit of respect they might still have commanded and are turning into bashing bags on the social media by those who suffer from such daylight robbery. Even the African Union has in its current budget estimate tried to extract a 10 US Dollar tax for arrivals and departures and a 1 US Dollar tax on every bednight spent, raising an outcry of protests from the UNWTO over the WTTC and the respective private sectors, apart from many tourism ministers being totally opposed to tax their industry out of existence.

The government in Zanzibar, notoriously cash strapped and yet overly dependent on tourism, does not seem to have learned any lessons from the failures and fiascos elsewhere when they just announced a one US Dollar tax on tourists for every night spent, payable together with the hotel bill. Additionally is a further tax of 1 US Dollar payable when leaving any airport or seaport from Zanzibar to the mainland, under the disguise of an infrastructure levy and an infrastructure tax respectively.

Private sector sources are already outraged and have shared their contempt and disgust with this correspondent and are likely to fight it tooth and nail to safeguard their sector from being overtaxed and clients, especially now that the UK has lifted the obnoxious anti travel advisories against the Kenyan beaches, return to Diani, Bamburi, Shanzu, Watamu and Malindi instead of readily parting with yet more money.

Time, as always, will tell if the proposal sails through the legislative stages and how this folly will affect the relationship between private and public sector in Zanzibar, so do watch this space for updates.