Abstract:

In Portugal, the growth of the tourism sector is recent, but it has recorded in recent years a very significant growth rate. The most recent data from INE (2019) indicate that the number of foreign tourists grew 0,4% compared to 2017. The country received 12,76 million foreign tourists in 2018, up from 12,71 million in relation to the previous year (INE, 2019). As a result of this growth, the tourism sector is becoming increasingly competitive, and the economic benefits from this sector are increasingly emphasized, minimizing environmental impacts such as pollution, destruction of natural resources, and social congestion, crime, cultural conflicts and social change (Mihaliˇc, 2000), often making it impossible to implement sustainable tourism solutions (Fernández and Rivero, 2009). The rapid growth of the tourism sector and its social and environmental costs have required increasing and assertive regulation, with taxation taking a leading role (Cetin et al, 2017). The benefits of taxation (direct through municipal taxes, tourist taxes, visa fees, among others or indirectly through sales taxes) are not consensual: although they are a good source of income for the country to secure the supply of public goods that further promote the tourism sector - roads, airports, congress centres, among others (Cárdenas-García et al., 2015), the margins of tour operators, travel agents and accommodation owners are crushed and for tourists the prices increase, putting pressure on the competitiveness and quality of tourism destinations (PWC, 2017). The city of Porto introduced the tourist tax in March 1st 2018. The fee is charged to guests over the age of thirteen and is 2 EUR per person/night in all types of tourism accommodation establishments, up to a maximum of 7 consecutive nights per person/stay. The paper presents the following core objective: i) evaluate the level of knowledge of the tourists about the implementation of municipal tourist tax, ii) evaluate from a qualitative standpoint the tourist tax, and iii) segmenting the tourist considering the intersection between the level of knowledge and assessment.