With tourists outnumbering locals by 20:1, islanders say levy is needed to help protect neolithic sites and maintain public services
Artisan jewellery, gift and whisky shops crowd the main street of Kirkwall on Orkney. The town even has a new sushi shop, offering bento boxes and matcha cheesecake.
Once home to the Viking earls who ruled the islands, Kirkwall has hit it rich: it tops the UK’s charts for cruise ship visits, as American, German and Italian tourists descend on remarkable neolithic sites such as Skara Brae and its medieval cathedral.
But many Orcadians are fed up: hosting about 450,000 visitors a year, 20 times the local population of 22,000, has a significant cost. Its narrow roads are congested, public buses overwhelmed, the neolithic stones at Brodgar are now fenced off to repair the erosion by visitors. Some tourists, unable to find toilets, have even been accused of defecating in the open.
Struggling to afford the costs of building new toilets, coach parks and paths to properly cater for visitors, the council and its business leaders want the power to introduce a new levy for every tourist who lands on Orkney, by either boat or air.
