Can Tourist Taxes Make Tourism More Sustainable?

The aim of this chapter is to improve our understanding of how tourism businesses behave in the context of mature tourist destinations, by grouping tourism businesses into homogeneous segments and identifying which factors explain willingness to pay when using certain tax instruments in each of these segments. The revenue raised by these tax instruments provides the funds needed to develop policies that improve both the sustainability and competitiveness of the destination. The case study presented in this chapter was carried out in Andalusia, a well-established, mass tourist destination in southern Spain that is largely unsustainable. As part of our analysis, we conducted 916 surveys of Andalusian tourism businesses. We then applied a two-step cluster analysis, identifying for each segment which variables explain a willingness to pay proposed taxes. Out of the three clusters identified, the variables “business size,” “activity,” and “turnover” yielded the greatest discriminatory power.