The coalition of mayors from all over England urged the government to allow local authorities to introduce Barcelona-style tourists to tax them to generate revenue from the tourism industry.

Under Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, the group believes that the tax on visitors will be for tourism and cultural infrastructure, strengthen regional growth and reduce reliance on central government funds.

The letter to Culture Minister Lisa Nandy and Prime Minister Rachel Reeves has been signed by Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan; Mayor of Northeast Kim McGuinness; Richard Parker, Mayor of West Midlands; Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire.

They say provisions can be made in the upcoming English Decentralization Act or a specific financial bill to allow local authorities to freely design and introduce locally managed visitor taxes.

This means that the cities they represent, including Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Birmingham and London, can file charges to gain direct benefits from the tourism industry.

Many European cities have similar taxes, including Venice, Lisbon and Amsterdam, and the Balearic Islands in Spain.

The mayor said a visitor tax could raise nearly £11 million a year in Liverpool city areas where more than 60 million tourists are received each year. The city hosted Eurovision in 2023, with a direct economic impact of £54 million.

The mayor said that if one-night tax of between £1 and £5 was introduced in Greater Manchester, it could raise between £8 million and £40 million a year, which could be used for infrastructure projects such as Old Trafford or the regeneration of airport developments.

The mayor said the funds raised through visitor taxation will be reinvested locally and said the government needs urgent action as decentralized governments in Scotland and Wales are moving forward with their own tourism taxation, putting the UK region at risk of lagging behind.

"The Liverpool urban area is a global icon of creativity, culture and character - attracting more than 60 million visitors a year and supporting a £6.25 billion tourist economy," Rotherland said. "It's incredible pride - but it's also accompanied by the pressure on our infrastructure and services.

“A small fee overnight – most of us don’t think twice when traveling abroad – will allow us to reinvest it directly into something that makes our region so special.”

"A modest visitor taxation - something we pay in the rest of Europe - provides a fair, sustainable way to support our local services when national resources are under real pressure."

"The local tourism tax is so mainstream in the rest of the world that you hardly notice it, so in the UK, it shouldn't be a big step."

Last year, a friend from a Lake District Landscape Charity report sent out a similar call. "In most parts of the world we are studying, there is a levy for some kind of tourism, and the number of tourism actually increases because the place gets better," said Mike Hill, CEO of the group.