A new tourist tax may make holidaying in Italy a little more expensive next summer.
The tax is contained in an amendment to the 2007 budget and would allow Italian towns and cities to charge foreign and domestic visitors from two to five euros extra per day.
The charge would be added on to daily accommodation rates. It would be up to local governments to decide whether they want to apply the tax but Italy's three most visited cities, Rome, Florence and Venice, have already said they plan to.
The depressed southern city of Naples has said it is against the idea, which was first floated during the summer.
The budget amendment allows councils to introduce discounts for tourist groups and tour companies, and to apply the tax for only certain periods of the year.
The proceeds will be used by the councils to improve tourist services and facilities and renovate city centres.
But the proposal came under immediate fire from Italy's Federalberghi, an association representing the country's hotels.
"This is tourism suicide," the association said.
"Hotels will be forced to put their prices up... and Italians will be the hardest hit since they account for 70% of annual bookings," it said.
"If councils want to tax tourists, then let them find another way of doing it but they will only succeed in driving tourists away," it concluded.
Another association representing large hotel chains, AICA, said the measure would penalise big hotels and encourage tax evasion among smaller ones already operating off the books.
"The introduction of a further tax on declared guests suggests that those hotels operating legally will pay the charge while those which habitually evade taxes won't. There is a risk of encouraging tax dodging," AICA said.
"We are totally against regarding tourists as a resource from whom money is be taken regardless of the services offered," it added.
The National Tourism Agency (ENIT) also protested, saying the tax would damage the tourism industry. Foreign tour operators have already slammed the idea, with some threatening to boycott Italy.
The German Association of Tour Operators (DRV) warned that a similar initiative on the Spanish island of Majorca in 2002 led to a sharp drop in the number of German tourists who visited the island.
The northeastern Adriatic resort of Rimini, a hugely popular destination with German tourists, has sought to ease alarm over the tax.
"Our German friends can relax - we will never apply an accommodation tax in Rimini," the council said last month.
But Florence has praised the measure as "an important development which we have been pushing for for years".
"This money will go to the city and not the State and will be used to improve the city itself and the services it offers, and that's in everyone's interests," Florence Mayor Leonardo Domenici said. Stressing that Florence is flooded by tourists for most of the year, Domenici said that "a contribution from them will help cover the higher cleaning, maintenance and security costs caused by tourism".
Venice Mayor Massimo Cacciari made the same point.
"Venice, with 20 million tourists a year - the equivalent of 50,000 a day - who use and dirty the city, cannot manage any longer with just the normal funds," he said.
