Australians will be among visitors slugged a bit more to stay in New Zealand, if the country’s tourism industry gets its way.

Tourism leaders across the Tasman want politicians to back a nationwide accommodation levy ahead of NZ’s looming election.

Regional Tourism New Zealand also wants a nationwide short-term accommodation register. It argues that the country has fallen behind comparable destinations in Australia, Canada, Europe and the US, which already have visitor charges.

Chair Andrew Wilson said money from the levy could be reinvested back into the areas where it was raised.

“An accommodation levy gives us the tools to invest in the places visitors come to experience – the infrastructure, the events, the amenities that make New Zealand destinations world-class,” he said.

“This is about enabling communities to grow tourism well and giving the industry a sustainable foundation to build on.”

The organisation hasn’t proposed a figure for the proposed levy, although it is thought likely to be modest. It would also be on top of the existing NZ$100 (A$81.85) International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy that most overseas arrivals pay when entering New Zealand.

Wilson said an accommodation levy – also called a bed tax – would mean visitors contributed directly to the communities they enjoy.

“At the moment, we’ve obviously got a lot of burden placed on residents and ratepayers having to fund this type of infrastructure and these assets,” he said.

“What we’re really looking to do is make sure the visitors contribute to that in a modest and fair way.”

The funding would be used for things such as paths, toilets and carparks, and other systems such as wastewater and transport, where visitors impose extra pressure. Wilson said without more sustainable funding, the quality of visitor experiences would be degraded.

Australians make up nearly half of New Zealand’s annual visitors. Photo: Getty

Australia is New Zealand’s largest source of overseas travellers. In 2025, 1.52 million Aussies visited New Zealand, a record high since the pandemic – and almost half the country’s total tourist arrivals of 3.4 million.

The proposed levy would be applied across all accommodation types as a user charge. It would target commercial accommodation and short-stay platforms such as Airbnb, so it did not hit worker and longer-term temporary accommodation in some communities.

National, the senior party in New Zealand’s governing coalition, has repeatedly ruled out implementing an accommodation levy in this term.

“We are undertaking work to look at it this term. There’s a number of complications. It’s a conversation that’s been around since 2017,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.

“If we progress with a policy, we’ll make sure we’re consulting with everybody in doing so.”

Luxon’s government did promise last year to consider a bed tax for Auckland, which is NZ’s biggest city. It wouldn’t be considered until at least 2027.

Pre-Covid, residents in the South Island tourism hub of Queenstown voted to implement a bed tax.

Wilson said the organisation wanted to “avoid a situation where there’s a whole variety of different arrangements and some kind of patchwork arrangement across the country”.

“If we’re going to head down this path, we want to make sure that we’ve done it once and done it at a national level,” he said.

The NZ proposal follows other destinations such as Kyoto, which earlier this year raised its nightly accommodation tax from ¥200-¥1000 ($A1.80-$9) to ¥2000-¥10,000 ($A18-($90).

Other tourist hubs also charge visitors’ fees. They include Venice, whose mayor recently proposed raising the charge for the busiest days to $83.