Higher prices for tourists are becoming the norm – and Britain should get in on the act

Telegraph

19-03-2025

For all their quirks, you can't fault the Japanese for their common sense. As a case in point, just look at the mayor of Kyoto, Koji Matsui, who recently announced that he is considering a higher price for tourists using the city's increasingly congested public transport network.
With Japan facing a huge increase in tourism in recent years, Matsui-san isn't the only one looking to take steps to make visitors pay a little bit more in order to compensate for the cheaper yen. Reports of Japanese restaurants and bars charging higher prices for foreigners have been rife in recent years, with the best deals reserved for those able to order from a Japanese-language menu.
While dual pricing remains somewhat of a taboo, some Japanese establishments have begun defending the practice – although not for the reason you might expect. One Tokyo restaurateur, Shogo Yonemitsu, told journalists that the extra charge (around £5) levied on non-locals was justified given that tourists very rarely spoke any Japanese and, thus, required extra attention from the service staff.
You can't fault the logic there. But is the extra reasoning really necessary? Surely, two-tier pricing can be justified on the much simpler basis that charging extra for tourists – particularly those benefiting from a steep currency discount – is a good idea in its own right and almost always morally justified to boot.
There's a reason that the practice is widespread across much of what development-types like to call the Global South. Attractions from the Giza Pyramids and the Taj Mahal to Machu Picchu have offered discounted prices for locals for decades. Sometimes the gap can be steep: at Galápagos National Park in Ecuador, Westerners can expect to pay five times as much as locals – and quite rightly so.
Traditionally, two-tier pricing has been justified by the imbalance in purchasing power. But now, the practice is increasingly being adopted by richer countries too. Just last month, no less a figure than President Macron of France announced plans to fund the upkeep of the Louvre by charging higher entrance fees to non-EU nationals – including Britons – from next year.
The Louvre isn't alone on that front. The Alhambra palace in Spain and the Acropolis in Athens both operate a similar system, with discounted prices for locals and other EU nationals. (In case you're curious, the inclusion of 'other EU nationals' is to keep on the right side of Brussels' law, which forbids countries from discriminating against their fellow EU citizens).
While the practice is less established in the US, it is starting to make an appearance in those States which attract the lion's share of tourists. In New York, locals visiting The Met gallery are encouraged to make a voluntary donation, for example, but are exempt from the usual $30 entry fee. Meanwhile, Disneyland has long offered discounted deals for Florida residents.
Across the world, then, the picture is clear: higher prices for tourists are becoming the norm. And while we may grumble about having to pay our Brexit premium to see the Mona Lisa, perhaps we should be directing our energies to a much bigger question: isn't it time that Britain got in on the game?
Anyone who spends time in London will be painfully aware that tourism numbers have been surging in recent years. According to the latest available figures, our capital city welcomed some 10.4 million international visitors in the first half of 2024. That's a 10 per cent increase since 2023 and 5 per cent more than in 2019, the last year of the pre-pandemic, pre-inflation world economy.
Of course, more visitors means more money for businesses and government coffers alike. But that doesn't mean these levels of tourism don't bring their downsides. By some estimates, more than 1 in 100 homes within the capital has been converted into an Airbnb, meaning higher rents for those who actually live and work in the city.
Then there are the specific cases where charging tourists is the only moral course of action. Take museums, for example. Free entry for those living in Britain makes sense, given that the vast majority of us contribute to their upkeep through taxation. But why should international visitors get to see the wonders of the British Museum without paying a penny?
The museum's outgoing interim director, Mark Jones, made a similar point last year. 'It would make sense for us to charge overseas visitors for admission to museums, as they charge us when we visit their museums,' he told The Sunday Times. You can apply the same logic to our glorious national parks, some of which, like Snowdonia, have seen a massive surge in visitors since the pandemic.
But rather than charge tourists more, Britain has a tendency to adopt systems which do the opposite – even if it is usually unintentional. Take the zone system on the London Underground, where longer journeys cost more. It may sound like common sense, but it also means that commuters end up shelling out more of their cash in order to subsidise tourists zipping between St Paul's and Oxford Circus.
Nor should we lose sight of the fact that many of the tourists flocking to the Royal Mile or Covent Garden wouldn't wince at paying extra. They clearly haven't been put off by the already grossly inflated hotel prices in London and Edinburgh. Not to mention the fact that many of them are coming from the States, and are thus already saving money due to the stronger dollar.
It's true that introducing tourist premium prices would require a bit of thinking. Flashing a British passport would be the obvious option, but that doesn't account for the large number of non-UK nationals living and working here. Needless to say, having the British Museum ask people to produce evidence of a recent gas bill would be infinitely stupider than the current system.
But even with those wrinkles, I'm increasingly convinced that it's time the UK followed both Japan and France in squeezing a little extra from our international visitors.
It might not be the way we've done things historically, but the wind is clearly blowing in one direction – and there are no prizes to be had standing in its way.