When Hotellistat pulls rates from OTAs for your property and its competitive set, one detail is easy to overlook but critical for accurate benchmarking: those rates include VAT, but exclude city tax and overnight accommodation tax.
This isn't a Hotellistat convention, but reflects how OTAs display pricing at the point of sale across most of Europe. VAT is a fixed percentage added to the room rate itself. Local accommodation taxes, by contrast, are mandated by municipalities or national governments, vary by location, and are typically added at checkout or on arrival, outside the headline price.
Why the distinction matters for revenue management
If you're benchmarking your rate against competitors without accounting for this, two hotels showing the "same" price on booking.com may not actually cost the guest the same amount. Getting this wrong can distort perceived rate positioning and lead to pricing decisions based on an incomplete picture. Below is a snapshot of the typical accommodation-related charges you'll encounter across four markets, so you can interpret shopped rates correctly and build tax adjustments into your comp set analysis where needed.
Germany
Germany has no single national accommodation tax â each city sets its own, under names like Bettensteuer, Ăbernachtungssteuer, or Kulturförderabgabe. Structures vary between flat per-person-per-night fees and percentage-of-rate models:
Berlin: 7.5% of the net overnight price
Cologne: 5% per person per night
Frankfurt: âŹ2 per person per night
DĂŒsseldorf: âŹ3 per person per night
Dresden: 6%
Bremen: 5.5% (effective January 2026)
Bonn: 7% of the accommodation charge, VAT included (effective January 2026)
Stuttgart: âŹ3 per person per night (effective July 2026)
Munich: currently does not levy a municipal accommodation tax
Switzerland
Switzerland applies a Kurtaxe (visitor's tax), sometimes alongside a separate cantonal or communal Beherbergungsabgabe (accommodation levy). Both are set at canton or municipality level rather than nationally, so rates differ sharply by destination:
Typically CHF 1â7 per person per night, depending on canton and season
Common ranges: Geneva ~CHF 4.25/person/night; Basel-Stadt ~CHF 4.20/person/night; Lucerne CHF 1.10â4.40/person/night
Some cities (e.g. Zurich) also see a voluntary hospitality-association "City Tax" of around CHF 3.50/person/night, collected by member hotels and via Airbnb, which sits outside the statutory tax entirely
Austria
Austria's Ortstaxe (also called Kurtaxe or NĂ€chtigungsabgabe in some provinces) is set at provincial level:
Vienna: 3.2% of the net accommodation charge (VAT and breakfast excluded) until 30 June 2026; rising to 5% from 1 July 2026, and 8% from 1 July 2027
Salzburg: approx. âŹ3.00â3.05 per person per night (raised in 2025)
Tyrol: approx. âŹ2.00â2.60 per person per night, varying by region
Greece
Greece charges a national Climate Crisis Resilience Fee (TAKK), applied per room or per property per night rather than per person, so occupancy doesn't change the amount:
Low season (NovâMar): âŹ0.50ââŹ4 per room/property per night
High season (AprâOct): âŹ2ââŹ15 per room/property per night, scaled by official star rating (5-star hotels sit at the top of the range)
Short-term rentals: âŹ2/night (low season) to âŹ8/night (high season); larger villas up to âŹ15/night
Note: Greece also applies 13% VAT on accommodation nationally, reduced to 9% on qualifying small islands under a population threshold
Takeaway for compset analysis
Local taxes can range from effectively zero (e.g., Munich) to over 10% of the room rate (e.g., Vienna from mid-2026, Berlin). Because Hotellistat's shopped rates from OTAs are VAT-inclusive but tax-exclusive, the cleanest way to compare true guest-facing cost across a mixed-market compset is to layer the relevant local tax on top of the shopped rate for each property, rather than assuming parity. Given how frequently these taxes change (e.g., Vienna's and Bonn's rates both shift again within the next year) we recommend revisiting this reference periodically rather than treating it as fixed.