Tourist Tax And Visitor Levy In Liverpool 2026: What Hotels Need To Know

How Liverpool's Accommodation BID Charge Works

Liverpool's Accommodation BID (ABID) charge is a £2 per occupied room or unit, per night fee added to hotel and serviced accommodation bills across the city. It is not a government tax. It is a hotel-industry-run levy managed by Liverpool BID Company and approved by a ballot of the accommodation businesses that pay it.

The ABID itself has existed since January 2023, created under the Business Improvement Districts (England) Regulations 2004, the same legal framework that lets any UK town or city centre business community vote to fund shared services through a supplementary levy on top of business rates. Liverpool's version is specific to hotels and serviced accommodation rather than retail or hospitality generally, and its ballot works differently from a normal BID vote. An alteration ballot needs a majority of both the number of votes cast and the combined rateable value of the properties voting, which is why the 2025 change to the levy structure had to go back to hotels for a fresh vote rather than being set by the council or the BID's board alone.

This BID structure is Liverpool's own choice, not a universal UK model. Other English cities running an accommodation levy through the same regulations have set their own rates, thresholds, and ballot terms independently, so a rule that applies in one BID city does not automatically apply in another.

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Tax Rates and Eligibility

The table below sets out exactly what applies, and to whom, under the current version of Liverpool's ABID charge.

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Collection and Remittance

Guests pay the £2 charge as a line item on their bill, added either at check-in or at check-out. The hotel or serviced accommodation operator is the one legally responsible for calculating and paying it forward, using the STR occupancy formula rather than a self-reported room count.

Unlike a standard business rates bill, the ABID charge is not paid to Liverpool City Council. It is remitted to Liverpool BID Company, the private not-for-profit organisation that runs the Accommodation BID, using an invoice reference issued directly to each levy payer. Billing runs on a quarterly cycle aligned to four periods: June to August, September to November, December to February, and March to May.

One wrinkle worth knowing about: shortly after the 2025 ballot passed, Premier Inn owner Whitbread lodged a challenge with the Secretary of State asking for the result to be declared void, citing alleged irregularities in how the ballot was run. A challenge does not automatically pause a BID ballot result, so the revised charge went ahead on schedule from 1 June 2025. As a temporary safeguard, the council agreed to hold additional income collected under the new structure separately, refundable to levy payers if the ballot were ultimately voided. Hotels should check current guidance from Liverpool BID Company before treating the charge terms as permanently settled.

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Why Liverpool Changed From a Percentage Charge to a Flat Fee

When the Accommodation BID first launched in 2023, hotels and serviced accommodation above the £45,000 rateable value threshold paid an annual levy calculated as a fixed percentage of that rateable value, the same basic mechanic used to calculate business rates themselves. That model raised roughly £900,000 a year for the BID, a figure fixed to each property's rateable value rather than to how many rooms it actually sold on any given night.

The problem the BID's board identified was a mismatch between what funded the levy and what the levy was meant to achieve. A rateable-value percentage does not move with visitor numbers, event calendars, or occupancy. It generates roughly the same income whether Liverpool is hosting a major conference that fills every hotel room in the city centre or sitting through a quiet February. That made it hard to build a large enough fund to compete with other UK cities for the kind of big-ticket conferences, exhibitions, and business events that actually drive overnight stays, since the fund's size had no direct link to the visitor activity it was supposed to help create.

The 2025 alteration ballot replaced that model with an occupancy-based charge: £2 for every room or unit actually occupied on a given night, calculated using the monthly Liverpool average occupancy rate published by STR (Smith Travel Research) rather than each hotel's own figures, which keeps the calculation independently verifiable and consistent across the sector. Because the charge now scales with actual room nights sold rather than a static property valuation, it is projected to raise roughly £9.2 million over two years, several times what the old percentage model generated in the same period. Of that, £6.7 million is earmarked for a subvention fund used to help Liverpool bid for and host events such as the Labour Party Conference, exhibitions, and business forums that reliably fill hotel rooms across the city. The logic is a deliberate feedback loop: charge revenue funds event-attraction spending, event attraction drives room nights, and room nights fund the next round of the levy. That link between the charge's structure and its own stated purpose is the detail that makes Liverpool's version of this levy distinct from a flat citywide visitor charge that simply funds general improvements.

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Common Mistakes Hotels Make With Liverpool's ABID Charge

1. Treating the charge as a percentage of the room rate: It is a flat £2 per occupied room or unit per night, regardless of what the room actually sold for, so a higher-priced room does not generate a higher charge.
2. Applying the ABID charge below the rateable value threshold: Properties with a rateable value under £45,000 are exempt entirely. Charging guests at a property that does not meet the threshold creates a refund problem, not a compliance win.
3. Remitting payment to the council instead of Liverpool BID Company: The ABID charge is a private levy administered by the BID, not a council tax or business rates payment, and it uses its own invoice references.
4. Trying to self-report occupancy instead of using the STR calculation: The charge is meant to be calculated from the STR-published Liverpool average occupancy rate for each month, not from a property's own internal booking count, and mismatches can trigger the BID's appeals process.
5. Assuming the charge is still billed annually: The old percentage-of-rateable-value model was billed annually alongside business rates. The current occupancy-based version is billed on a quarterly cycle, and missing a quarter's deadline out of habit from the old system is an easy mistake.
6. Ignoring the 2025 legal challenge when budgeting: Because a formal challenge to the ballot was still working its way through the Secretary of State's office after the charge took effect, hotels that assumed the terms were final without checking for updates risked being caught off guard by any refund or adjustment process.

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Where A PMS Fits

None of this is really about software. It is about a hotel getting the eligibility rule and the calculation basis right, consistently, across every booking. But Liverpool's version of the charge is unusual enough that it puts two specific demands on a property's systems at once. First, because the £45,000 rateable value threshold makes some properties liable and others exempt, a property management system (PMS) needs a simple property-level flag for whether the ABID charge applies at all, so front desk staff are never guessing or applying it by habit. Second, because the charge is £2 per occupied room per night rather than a percentage of the rate, it needs to be configured as a flat per-night, per-occupied-room line item rather than folded into a percentage-based tax rule built for VAT or a rateable-value levy.

roommaster's tax configuration lets a property set up that kind of flat, per-night charge against actual occupied rooms rather than a percentage of revenue, and its reporting can break out that charge by date range separately from room revenue, which matters here because the ABID charge is remitted to Liverpool BID Company on its own quarterly cycle, not folded into a council payment or a VAT return. A property that also wants to keep an eye on how its own room nights contribute to the wider subvention fund, distinct from what it owes for the ABID charge itself, can use the same occupancy and revenue reports to track that pattern over time rather than trying to reconstruct it from raw booking data after the fact.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Liverpool's tourist tax called?

Liverpool does not have a tourist tax in the sense of a government-imposed charge. What guests actually pay is the Accommodation BID (ABID) charge, sometimes called the City Visitor Charge, a levy run by Liverpool BID Company on behalf of the city's hotels and serviced accommodation operators.

2. How much is Liverpool's visitor levy?

It is £2 per occupied room or unit, per night, added to the bill at eligible hotels and serviced accommodation. It does not scale with the room rate and is not charged per guest.

3. Which hotels have to charge the ABID levy?

Only hotels and serviced accommodation with a rateable value of £45,000 or above. Properties below that threshold are exempt from the charge.

4. Who collects Liverpool's £2 hotel charge, and who is it paid to?

Hotels collect the charge from guests at check-in or check-out, then remit it to Liverpool BID Company on a quarterly cycle. It is not paid to Liverpool City Council, even though the council was involved in approving and overseeing the ballot that introduced it.

5. Is Liverpool's visitor levy the same as Manchester's City Visitor Charge?

They are both Accommodation BID charges rather than government taxes, but they are separate schemes run by separate BID companies with their own ballots, rates, thresholds, and fund structures. A rule confirmed for one city's charge should not be assumed to apply to the other.

6. Why did Liverpool change from a percentage-based levy to a flat fee?

The original levy was a fixed percentage of a hotel's rateable value, which raised a steady amount regardless of how full the city's hotels actually were. Hotels voted in 2025 to switch to a £2 per occupied room night charge so that the money raised would scale with actual visitor activity and support a larger fund for attracting the events that drive overnight stays.

7. What is the subvention fund used for?

It is the portion of ABID charge income, projected at £6.7 million over two years, set aside to help Liverpool secure conferences, exhibitions, and business events that fill hotel rooms across the city. It works as a citywide investment in event attraction rather than a rebate paid directly to individual properties.

8. Is Liverpool's ABID charge guaranteed to stay in place at these terms?

The charge took effect on 1 June 2025 and remains in force, but a legal challenge to the ballot that approved it was lodged shortly afterward. Hotels should check current guidance from Liverpool BID Company for the latest status rather than assuming the rate, threshold, or structure described here is permanently fixed.