John MacDonald: This bed tax idea isn't one to sleep on

Author: John MacDonald,
Publish Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2026, 12:27pm

Follow the podcast on

There were truckloads of people in Christchurch at the weekend for the Warriors game at One NZ Stadium.

How many? 6,000.

That’s how many out-of-towners were here during the weekend just gone. And they reckon the economic benefits for the city will be somewhere in the area of $4.7 million.

That’s on top of the $13 million that came into the city during the big Super Rugby Super Round weekend back in April.

Now, if you’re the government, you’d probably point to that and say this crowd calling today for a new bed tax to help cover tourism costs are barking up the wrong tree.

But I think the government needs to wake up to the fact that councils around the country are struggling to keep up and need a bed tax to take the burden off ratepayers.

The argument being that visitors should help pay for the infrastructure they use. Which I think is an absolute no-brainer.

So what’s happening, is Christchurch is one area pushing for a bed tax to help fund infrastructure and services to support and grow tourism.

The way it would work, is IRD would take in a nationwide visitor and accommodation levy and distribute the money back to the areas where it was collected.

The tax funds could only be used by councils on tourism spending. With the mayors and tourism leaders pushing for it saying it would ease the burden on ratepayers.

And it would be the same rate across the country. That’s why IRD would be involved, so that different places didn’t charge different amounts.

It would be a relatively straightforward solution to a major problem facing areas which have to rely on ratepayer money to pay for tourism infrastructure, as well as all the other stuff.

The government isn’t overly interested. And I know why.

It’s because it’s bought into this weird idea that, if you start charging visitors extra taxes, they won’t bother coming here. Which is such a backward way of looking at it.

Because, if you’ve been overseas, you’ll know how in other countries you pretty much pay to breathe. Slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

And if we think that paying a bit extra for accommodation - through this bed tax - is going to put people off coming here, then we’re not very confident about the place or ourselves, are we?

What’s more, this is the government that isn’t interested in a bed tax but, at the same time, increased the visitor levy for people from overseas.

The other thing, is whether a bed tax should only apply to visitors from overseas or whether it should apply to New Zealanders travelling around the country, as well.

My view is that it should apply to everyone - locals and people from overseas. Because when we go to places such as Queenstown or Twizel or up north somewhere, it’s very unlikely that we have contributed anything towards the key infrastructure that supports the tourism sector.

By and large, it’s local ratepayers who pay for that.

So, for me, I think we should have a bed tax in New Zealand. And we should all pay it, wherever we’re from.

LISTEN ABOVE