While the idea of a "tourist tax" can take many different forms and has been put toward everything from wider city budget to keeping the area around popular attractions clean, the idea has been spreading.
Iceland, the Bahamas and the Indonesian island of Bali are currently toying with the idea while Italy's Venice, Mexico's Cancun and Amsterdam in the Netherlands all introduced one in 2022.
Related: Domino effect: A tourist tax is coming to another country many want to visit
In the Caribbean Sea, the U.S. Virgin Islands became the latest territory to introduce an extra fee for those stopping by the archipelago. Still limited in scope, it will only apply to those coming into the two cruise ports of St. Thomas and St. Croix on a Royal Caribbean (RCL) -) ship.
This is who will have to pay an extra fee when coming into this Caribbean territory
It will cost $5 and, according to the local port authorities, go to "fund pre-development costs to advance structural improvements and dredging required to allow the larger Freedom-class cruise ships to dock in St. Croix." The fee will be billed to the cruise ship company and incorporated into the wider price of the cruise overall.
While cruise lines such as Norwegian (NCLH) -) and Carnival (CCL) -) also travel to the U.S. Virgin Islands, the fee will for now only apply to Royal Caribbean and subsidiaries such as Celebrity and Silversea Cruises, as the company with the largest ships and number of people it takes to the islands.
"We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with Royal Caribbean Group as we move forward in the development of these exciting projects that will benefit the territory and strengthen this U.S. Virgin Islands’ position as a premier destination," Virgin Islands Port Authority Executive Director Carlton Dowe said in a statement.
U.S. Virgin Islands positioned it as a step toward the future but has not yet provided details on what kind of developments it has in store or whether such a fee will eventually be extended to other cruise companies.
Popular destinations see these taxes as 'progress.' What about tourists?
"The Caribbean and the rest of the world are not waiting for the USVI to advance," Howe said. "The time for progress is now."
Many of the places that introduced or are planning to introduce a tourist tax have been dealing with overpopulation and environmental degradation from more visitors than the area can handle. At a United Nations Climate Ambition Summit in September 2023, Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir told a reporter that many of the tourists "visit our unspoiled nature and obviously that creates a pressure" as "tourism has really grown exponentially in Iceland in the last decade."
When voting to start charging a tourist tax for those coming into the city on the most crowded weekends, Venice's city council said that it was not meant as a "tool for making cash" but rather to "regulate tourist flows" without closing the city.
The 150 to 300 baht (up to $9 USD) that Thailand started charging international arrivals in February 2022 goes toward cleaning up the area around popular destinations and providing medical help to visitors who get injured without insurance.
As the fees are generally low comparative to the cost of visiting these countries from another part of the world, tourists are yet to show any kind of largescale pushback against these types of fees.
