It now seems that tourism ministers from more than 100 countries have strongly criticized the increase in the Air Passenger Duty tax that the UK government imposed this month. This tax, which rose on November 1^st, is set to go up again in a year’s time. The condemnation of the tax came at a summit organized by the UN World Tourism Organization in London.

At the time that the summit was held, there was no UK government representative present to defend the decision to recalculate the tax. On top of this Britain, has withdrawn its membership to the UN World Tourism Organization.

The secretary general of the UN World Tourism Organization, Talbe Rifai, said that the Air Passenger Duty tax is not an environmental measure, he went on to say that it’s an anti-development measure. The British government says that it wants to promote the development of poorer countries; however, this tax is a very terrible blow to their development overall.

He went on to say that, not only will the Air Passenger Duty tax hurt the poorer countries, but it will also hurt the UK’s tour operators. Talbe Rifai did say that the Dutch had just recently introduced a similar tax but quickly retracted it. Thailand has even dropped 50 percent of its airport fees, and Egypt is thinking about following suit.

Right now tourism is very weak in many countries, and this Air Passenger Duty tax is not going to help increase tourism to the UK. Some experts are even saying that this increase could actually cost more people jobs, which is something that the UK is aiming to improve not hurt.