Austria's Ortstaxe, province by province.

Austria has no national tourist tax. Each of the nine provinces has its own tourism act setting the name, the structure, the rate and the exemptions, and in most of them the individual municipality or tourism board fixes the final figure inside that framework. So a rate that is right for Vienna tells you nothing about Innsbruck, and a rate that is right for Innsbruck may not hold in the next valley along.

Wherever it applies it covers all paid accommodation: hotels, guesthouses, private apartments, hostels, Airbnb-style rentals and campsites. Your host collects it and remits it monthly. Whether it sits inside the price you were quoted or gets added at the property depends on the platform and the property rather than on the law, so the honest move is to check your booking's fee breakdown and ask if it is not itemised. For the wider picture see the Austria money guide.

Vienna is the outlier because it charges a percentage rather than a flat fee, so the tax grows with the room rate. Since 1 July 2026 it has been 5% of the accommodation price with VAT and breakfast excluded, up from 3.2%, under a law the Vienna provincial parliament adopted in December 2025. In practice a 100 euro room carries about 4.35 euros a night and a 300 euro room about 13 euros. It rises again to 8% on 1 July 2027, which is a dated future change rather than something to budget for a 2026 trip.

Two honest cautions. Any page quoting 3.2% is describing the pre-July-2026 rate, and there are a great many of them. And the basis for the calculation changed alongside the rate, so older explanations of the arithmetic, including the 11% lump-sum deduction that applied under the 3.2% regime, no longer describe how today's figure is reached. Treat the percentage and the worked euro figures above as the reliable part, and do not try to recompute it from an old formula.

Outside Vienna the model flips to a flat amount per person, per night, which means it scales with the size of your party rather than the price of your room. The city of Salzburg is around 3 euros a night, raised sharply from about 1.80 euros in 2025, and the province grades its rates by locality with small extra levies on top in some municipalities. Tyrol, which covers Innsbruck and the big ski areas, runs from about 2.60 euros at the lower end up to about 5 euros in the most in-demand valleys, set tourism board by tourism board.

Burgenland has charged a flat 4.50 euros since 1 January 2026, and Carinthia replaces its patchwork with a single 4.50 euros from 1 November 2026. Rates rose across several provinces during 2025 and 2026, so a figure of about 2 euros quoted for Tyrol or Salzburg is almost certainly the pre-2025 number. Treat all of these as a range and confirm the exact figure with your accommodation, because the municipality, the resort and the season all move it.

Children under 15 are exempt in Vienna, and the same age is common across the provinces, though because each one writes its own rules the exact age is a local question rather than a national one. Vienna also exempts anyone staying more than three consecutive months, and students whose accommodation is tied to their studies. Where a family stays together, an exemption reduces the bill by that person's share rather than cancelling the charge for the room.

The structural contrast is worth holding onto, because it decides who pays more. In Vienna the tax is a percentage of the room, so it scales with how smart a hotel you book and is indifferent to how many of you are in it. In Salzburg, Tyrol and the rest it is flat per person, so it ignores the room price and scales with the size of your party. A couple in a good Vienna hotel and a family of four in a modest alpine guesthouse can land on similar numbers by completely different routes.

Common questions

Quick answers.

More on Austria

The little money things nobody warns you about.

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