Collecting a visitor levy is not difficult. Doing it consistently, for every booking, across a busy season, while also mowing the field and unblocking a shower, is where it falls apart. The money is small and the guest pays it, so the risk is never really financial. The risk is that in nine months' time you have to produce a number you cannot evidence.

This is the method I would use. It works whether you are charging Edinburgh's 5% today or getting ready for a Welsh 75p per person in 2027.

Step one: write down your own scheme in six lines

Before anything else, read your council's actual scheme document, or the Welsh Revenue Authority guidance if you are in Wales, and write down six things on one sheet of paper:

Pin it up where you take bookings. Nearly every mistake sites make comes from half remembering one of those six.

Step two: decide whether to show it or absorb it

You have two options and only one of them is a good idea.

Show it as a separate line. Your pitch is £30, the levy is £1.50, the total is £31.50. The guest sees a statutory charge with a name on it. Your own income stays clean, your records separate the levy from your turnover, and if the rate changes you change one number.

Absorb it into your price. The pitch quietly becomes £31.50 and you pay the levy out of it. It looks simpler on the booking page and it is worse in every other way. Your headline price goes up against competitors outside the levy area, you still have to calculate and evidence the levy element, and when the rate rises you have to re-price everything.

Show it. Guests are far more relaxed about a named government charge than about a site that has got more expensive for no visible reason.

Step three: tell people before they arrive, three times

Almost every argument about a tourist tax is an argument about surprise. Say it three times and the argument disappears:

If you use automatic guest emails, this is a five minute job once, rather than a conversation you repeat 300 times a season.

Step four: pick one collection point and stick to it

Most schemes let you collect at booking, at balance payment or on arrival. All three are fine. Mixing them is not, because your quarterly return then depends on remembering which bookings were treated which way.

For most sites, collecting with the balance is the sweet spot. Deposits stay simple, the levy is paid before arrival so nobody is fumbling for change at the gate, and cancellations are cleaner because the levy has usually not been taken yet on a booking that falls through.

If you take a lot of walk ins, decide in advance how they are handled and tell whoever is on the gate. Walk ins are where uncharged levies hide.

Step five: get the extras right

In Scotland the levy applies to the accommodation part of the bill only. Anything charged separately and itemised is outside it: firewood, awning charges, extra dogs, laundry tokens, shop purchases, a separately priced electric hookup. Anything bundled into the pitch price is inside it.

There is a small, legitimate saving here. If your £35 pitch price actually includes £5 of firewood, itemising that firewood separately takes it out of the levy calculation. Do not go silly with it, but tidy pricing is worth pounds a booking across a season and it makes your invoices clearer anyway.

In Wales the calculation is per person per night, so extras do not affect it at all. What matters there is accurate party numbers and knowing who is under 18.

Step six: record it as you go, never afterwards

This is the part that decides whether the levy is a five minute job or a lost weekend. For every chargeable stay you need:

If that lives on the booking, you are done. If it lives in your head, or spread across a paper diary, a card machine and a bank statement, then every quarter you are rebuilding it from scratch. That is the real cost of the levy for a paper based site, and it is far bigger than the levy itself.

This is the part CampSuite™ takes off you entirely. Set your rate once and every item on that list is recorded against the booking as it happens: the charge, the nights, the cap, the party, the exemption and its reason, and any refund. Nothing to remember, nothing to reconstruct.

Refunds and cancellations

The levy is not yours. If you refund a stay, the levy goes back with it, even where the rest of your terms are non refundable. If a guest shortens a stay, the levy follows the nights actually charged. If you move a booking to new dates, it follows the booking. Record every one of those movements against the booking rather than as a mental note, because a return that does not reconcile is a return you have to explain.

Bookings from Pitchup, Hipcamp and Airbnb

Responsibility for the levy sits with you as the accommodation provider unless the platform has an arrangement with the council to pay it directly. Check the position for each channel you use, because it differs, and it changes. Either way, keep the booking record. If every channel booking lands in one diary through a channel manager, your return covers all of them without you cross referencing four different portals in January.

Step seven: make the return boring

When the quarter ends, the return itself should take minutes. In Scotland you file total accommodation charges and total levy collected through the national online portal and pay at the same time. In Wales you file with the Welsh Revenue Authority, annually if your first year levy is £1,000 or less and quarterly above that.

The routine that works:

Do that four times a year and you will never have to reconstruct anything. In CampSuite™ the first step is the levy report: pick your dates and it gives you total accommodation charges, total levy collected, chargeable nights and exempt stays, exportable for the portal and your accountant.

What good looks like

A site that has this sorted can answer, in under a minute: how much levy did we collect in the second quarter, how many nights was it charged on, how many exempt guests did we have, and can you show me the bookings behind it. A site that has not will spend an evening with a diary and a calculator and still not be certain.

The difference is not diligence. It is whether the information was captured when the booking was made or is being reconstructed afterwards. Everything else follows from that.

If a levy is live in your council or heading there, start with CampSuite free. Switch the levy on, set your rate and cap, and steps four through seven above happen on their own: charged on every booking, shown as its own invoice line, reversed on refunds, and totalled for the return. Free for up to 100 pitches, no card needed, about 15 minutes to set up.

This article is general information for campsite owners, not tax or legal advice. Rules differ by council and country, so check your own scheme document or the Welsh Revenue Authority guidance. Last updated 27 July 2026.