It seems that during the European Tour Operators Association GEM Conference of 2009, which took place just last week in London, a number of issues regarding travel came up. One such issue that was heavily talked about was the UK’s travel taxation, which has been under heavy fire from many airlines and tour groups. This new tax comes at a very crucial time for an industry that is struggling to stay alive.

The key message on the tax came from the President of the European Tour Operators Association, Jack Coronna. He said that this new increase to the Air Passenger Duty would discourage people from wanting to visit Britain. Unfortunately for the people that live in Britain, this is not a tax that they can get away from paying so easily. However, for travelers all over the world, they can avoid the tax very easily by not traveling to the UK. This spells out big problems for the UK tourism industry.

Right now the UK government has raised airport departure taxes by 10 to 40 percent. Although this is a big jump, this is not the only bad news for the taxation. On top of this current raise, the government is planning to raise the tax again in just one year’s time.

Jack Coronna pointed out that other places like the Netherlands have already moved away from this tax and dropped it, meaning that other countries saw how bad this tax was going to be for their travel industry. However, it seems as if the UK government fails to see this or they simply do not care. He added that tourism is an industry worth growing and taking care of, but it can not grow if it is taxed this heavily.