Join Thousands of Hotels Thriving with roommaster
See how roommaster handles rates, taxes, and reporting for your property. Book a walkthrough with our team.
Table of Contents
Tourist Tax And Visitor Levy In Glasgow 2026: What Hotels Need To Know
A practical guide to Glasgow's 5% visitor levy, live from 25 January 2027, covering the April 2026 advance booking trigger, exemptions, retention rates, and remittance for accommodation providers.
September 12, 2026
9
min. read
Summarize with AI
TL;DR
- Glasgow's Visitor Levy Scheme was approved by the City Administration Committee on 19 June 2025 and takes effect for stays from 25 January 2027.
- The levy is set at 5% of the accommodation cost, the same headline rate Edinburgh uses.
- Unlike Edinburgh, which caps its levy at five consecutive nights, Glasgow charges the levy across the full length of a guest's stay with no maximum number of nights.
- Any booking taken from 1 April 2026 for a stay on or after 25 January 2027 must have the levy applied and disclosed to the guest at the time of booking, not just at check in.
- Accommodation providers keep 1.5% of what they collect to cover administration costs. Edinburgh's providers keep 2%, so the two schemes are not interchangeable in a multi property setup.
- The levy applies to hotels, hostels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts, and self catering accommodation across the city.
- Predicted revenue is around £16 million a year, with spending decided by the City Administration Committee advised by a dedicated Visitor Levy Forum.
- Glasgow's go live date sits roughly six months after Edinburgh's, giving hotels a longer runway to configure billing and reporting systems, but also a longer window in which advance bookings can be taken incorrectly.
How Glasgow's Visitor Levy Works
Glasgow City Council approved its Visitor Levy Scheme on 19 June 2025, making Glasgow the second Scottish city to confirm a scheme under the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024, after Edinburgh. The scheme goes live for stays from 25 January 2027, giving accommodation providers an unusually long lead time to prepare their booking, billing, and reporting systems.
The levy is charged as a percentage of the accommodation charge only. Food, drink, parking, spa treatments, and other add ons are not included in the calculation. It is the guest who ultimately pays the levy, but the accommodation provider is legally responsible for adding it to the bill, collecting it, and remitting it to Glasgow City Council.
The detail that sets Glasgow apart from Edinburgh is how long a stay the levy applies to. Edinburgh's scheme stops charging the levy after five consecutive nights in the same property. Glasgow's scheme has no such cap: the levy is charged for the entire length of a guest's stay, however long it runs. For a two week corporate stay or an extended film production booking, that is a meaningfully larger levy total than an identical stay in Edinburgh would generate.
The other operational detail hotels need to plan around is the advance booking trigger. Any reservation taken on or after 1 April 2026, for a stay date of 25 January 2027 or later, must already have the levy built into the price shown to the guest and applied at billing. Because Glasgow hotels routinely take bookings well over a year out, particularly for conferences, weddings, and major events at the SEC, this means the levy has to be live in booking engines and channel managers well before a single guest actually checks in under the new scheme.
Tax Rates and Exemptions
The table below summarizes how the levy applies once Glasgow's scheme goes live on 25 January 2027.
Collection and Remittance
Accommodation providers are responsible for calculating the levy, adding it to the guest's bill, and collecting it at the point of payment. Registration, returns, and payment to the council run through visitorlevy.scot, the national digital platform built for Scotland's visitor levy schemes, which is also scheduled to be ready in time for the April 2026 advance booking trigger.
As compensation for the administrative burden of collecting the levy, Glasgow's accommodation providers keep 1.5% of what they collect. The remaining amount, along with the money the council does not pass back through retention, funds Glasgow's visitor levy programs. That is a lower retention rate than Edinburgh's 2%, which matters for any hotel group running the same PMS configuration across both cities: a retention percentage copied over from an Edinburgh property will misstate a Glasgow property's own income and its remittance to the council.
Returns are expected to be submitted quarterly and in arrears, covering accommodation revenue only, separate from the wider VAT return a business already files. Predicted annual revenue for Glasgow is around £16 million. Decisions on how that money is spent sit with the City Administration Committee, advised by a ten member Visitor Levy Forum made up of tourism and business representatives, including the chair, who represents the Greater Glasgow Hoteliers Association, alongside community and council officer representatives. The forum's guidance is that revenue should be reinvested in services and infrastructure used by visitors, and industry feedback gathered during consultation was explicit that the money should not be used to plug general council budget gaps.
How Glasgow Compares to Edinburgh and the Rest of Scotland
Glasgow and Edinburgh both operate under the same Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024 and both settled on the same headline 5% rate, but the two schemes are not identical in practice. Edinburgh's scheme started first, applying from 24 July 2026, roughly six months ahead of Glasgow's 25 January 2027 start. Edinburgh also caps its levy at five consecutive nights per stay, while Glasgow charges across the full length of a stay with no cap at all.
Retention rates differ too: Edinburgh's accommodation providers keep 2% of what they collect, while Glasgow's keep 1.5%. Both cities require the levy to be applied to advance bookings taken well before their respective go live dates, but the trigger dates themselves are different, so a booking engine cannot simply reuse one city's rule set for the other.
Beyond Glasgow and Edinburgh, other Scottish local authorities, including Highland and Aberdeen, are at earlier stages of consulting on or approving their own schemes, each free to set its own rate, night cap, and retention percentage within the framework the national Act allows. Hotel groups operating across several Scottish cities should expect to manage several distinct sets of rules rather than one uniform Scottish visitor levy.
Common Mistakes Hotels Make With Glasgow's Visitor Levy
- Missing the 1 April 2026 trigger date: Systems need to start applying the levy to bookings taken from that date for qualifying stay dates, not wait until the January 2027 go live date to switch anything on.
- Copying Edinburgh's five night cap into Glasgow's configuration: Glasgow has no cap on chargeable nights, so a rule ported over from an Edinburgh property will undercharge on any stay longer than five nights.
- Using the wrong retention percentage: Glasgow providers keep 1.5%, not Edinburgh's 2%. A multi property chain that reuses one city's finance settings for the other will misstate income and misreport what is owed to the council.
- Charging VAT before adding the levy instead of after: VAT is due on the total charge including the levy, so calculating VAT on the pre levy room rate alone understates the amount due.
- Assuming a resident or corporate exemption exists: Glasgow has not published a local exemption beyond the statutory disability benefit reimbursement process, so treating other guest categories as exempt without a published council policy risks under-collection.
- Treating the long runway to January 2027 as a reason to delay: The advance booking rule means real, chargeable reservations already need correct handling more than eight months before the first guest checks in under the new scheme.
Where A PMS Fits
Glasgow's version of the levy puts unusual pressure on the booking date, not just the stay date. Because any reservation taken from 1 April 2026 for a stay on or after 25 January 2027 must already carry the levy, a property management system needs a tax rule that can be scheduled to activate on a future booking date almost a year before the first affected guest ever checks in. That is a forward dated rule, distinct from simply switching on a new tax at midnight on the go live date, and it needs to be tested against real reservations sitting in the system long before January 2027 arrives.
The absence of a five night cap also means rate and tax configuration cannot be copied from an Edinburgh property in the same portfolio. roommaster's tax and rate configuration lets each property carry its own levy rules, including whether a cap on chargeable nights applies at all, so a long corporate or event stay in Glasgow is charged correctly for its full length while an equivalent stay in Edinburgh stops accruing the levy after five nights.
On the guest folio, the levy needs to sit as its own itemized line, calculated on the accommodation charge alone and excluding food, parking, and other extras, with VAT then applied to the combined total exactly as UK VAT rules require. For remittance, a multi property operator needs reporting that tracks Glasgow's 1.5% retention separately from Edinburgh's 2%, so quarterly returns to each council reflect the right numbers rather than a blended, incorrect figure. Getting the retention percentage and the night cap right property by property is the difference between a clean quarterly return and a manual reconciliation exercise every time a return is due.
See how roommaster simplifies multi-property tax reporting.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. When does Glasgow's visitor levy start?
The levy applies to stays from 25 January 2027, following approval of Glasgow City Council's Visitor Levy Scheme by the City Administration Committee on 19 June 2025.
2. What rate is Glasgow's visitor levy?
Glasgow's levy is set at 5% of the accommodation charge, calculated on the room cost only and excluding food, drink, parking, and other extras.
3. Is there a cap on how many nights the levy applies to in Glasgow?
No. Glasgow charges the levy across the entire length of a guest's stay with no maximum number of nights. This differs from Edinburgh, which stops charging the levy after five consecutive nights.
4. When do hotels need to start applying the levy to bookings?
Any booking taken on or after 1 April 2026 for a stay on or after 25 January 2027 must already have the levy applied and shown to the guest, even though the stay itself may still be many months away.
5. How much of the levy can accommodation providers keep?
Providers keep 1.5% of what they collect to cover the administrative cost of running the levy. The remainder goes to Glasgow City Council. Edinburgh's equivalent retention rate is 2%, so the two cities should not be treated as interchangeable in a shared system configuration.
6. Who is exempt from Glasgow's visitor levy?
The main published exemption covers guests receiving qualifying disability benefits. They pay the levy at the time of their stay and can apply to Glasgow City Council for reimbursement within a calendar month, provided they can show proof of the stay and their benefit entitlement. Glasgow has not published a broader local exemption, such as a resident exemption, beyond this statutory minimum.
7. How does Glasgow's visitor levy differ from Edinburgh's?
Both cities use the same 5% rate under the same national law, but Glasgow starts around six months later, has no cap on chargeable nights where Edinburgh caps at five, and lets accommodation providers retain 1.5% rather than Edinburgh's 2%.
8. How much money will Glasgow's visitor levy raise?
Predicted revenue is around £16 million a year. Spending decisions sit with Glasgow City Council's City Administration Committee, advised by a ten member Visitor Levy Forum drawn from the tourism industry, local businesses, and community representatives.
