If Visiting the Japanese island of Miyajima in your bucket list destination, it would be slightly costlier for you because the island of Miyajima has voted to charge tourists extra money as Tourist Tax to visit the island.
The island, also known as Itsukushima, is a short ferry ride away from Hiroshima and a well-liked pleasure trip site for guests to the area.
Taro Matsumoto is the newly elected mayor of Hatsukaichi town, which is in Hiroshima prefecture. He ran on a successful campaign to impose a tourist tax for visiting Miyajima island.
Taro Matsumoto told reporters in a press conference that “It is necessary to secure new financial resources in order to continuously maintain quality of the Island as a tourist spot,” and that he hopes the tax will be enforced by the spring of 2021.
About 4.31 million tourists visited Miyajima in 2018.
As per the current proposal an amount of ¥100 or $1 as been charged as a Tourist Tax or Admission Fee to visit Miyajima.
There are 3 doable ways for imposing and assembling the tax: charging every traveler traveling by ferry, increasing the tax for the ferry operators or charging tax on to the guests once they use facilities on the island.
Japan is presently in an interesting state of flux. Foreign tourism has skyrocketed ahead of Tokyo’s hosting of the Olympic Games in 2020, whereas the population is both aging and urbanizing, leaving a lot of rural areas of the country troubled to catch up.
Miyajima is not exempt — the island has difficulty of aging population and faces a revenue shortage.
As of 2015, there were 1,674 residents living on the island, which is about 1,000 fewer people than 10 years ago.
And so far Miyajima is the only destination that is adding or considering a tax on tourists.
Several destinations throughout Asia, dealing with the long-term effects of over-tourism, have levied extra fees to help get hold of the damages incurred by a lot of travellers.
Bali, a quite popular tourist spot, declared in 2019 that they were considering a tourist tax to assist pay for native environmental efforts.
Also in Indonesia, Komodo Island — home to the famous Komodo dragon — continues to be working out a system to strictly manage the number of individuals allowed to go to the island and how much to charge those who are permitted access.
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