How do I add tourist tax to my bookings?

You add tourist tax (also called Kurtaxe, city tax, or visitor's tax) as an Additional Item in your Booking Engine, so it is charged on bookings made through your own website. Where the tax is handled depends on where the guest booked: you control it for your own website and Booking Engine bookings, while a channel like Booking.com or Airbnb handles it on its own side for bookings that come from that channel.

Where tourist tax is handled depends on where the guest booked

Bookings from your own website or the Booking Engine: you set the tax up in Smoobu as an Additional Item, and it is added to the guest's booking. The steps below cover this.

Bookings from a channel (Booking.com, Airbnb, Vrbo, and so on): the channel collects and handles tourist tax on its own side, and Smoobu has no control over it. You cannot set or change tourist tax for these bookings inside Smoobu. If you need to adjust it, do so in the channel's own settings. For a booking imported from a channel, the price Smoobu stores already includes the tourist tax (along with the commission and any cleaning fee), so you see it in your revenue figures but you do not set it. See .

Before you start

• Your Booking Engine is set up and your property has a price. Additional Items live on the Booking Engine's Accommodation settings, and a property with no price does not appear in the booking flow. See .

Steps

1. Go to Configuration > Booking Engine and open the Accommodation settings tab.
2. Pick the property from the Accommodation Selection dropdown. To apply the same tax to several properties at once, click Edit in Bulk.
3. Next to Additional items, click the + icon to open the new-item form.
4. In Name, type what the guest should see, for example "Tourist tax" or "Kurtaxe".
5. Under Accommodations, select the properties this tax applies to.
6. Enter the Value and choose € or %. If you report a tax rate separately, set it in Tax %.
7. Set Calculation Basic to how the amount is worked out: per booking, per person, per night, or per person and night. City taxes are commonly set up per person and night.
8. Choose Required field or Optional. Required field adds the tax to every booking automatically and the guest must pay it. Optional shows it as an add-on the guest can choose.
9. Optionally set max. quantity, and choose where the item shows (All, Booking System, or Guest Guide).
10. Click Save.

Check it worked

Open your Booking Engine the way a guest sees it (use Preview, or open your external link in a private browser window) and start a test booking. If you set the tax to Required field, it is added to the total automatically. If you set it to Optional, it appears as an add-on the guest can tick. Tourist tax you set up this way can also appear on the guest invoice you generate in Smoobu.

Common problems

I can't find where to set tourist tax for my Booking.com or Airbnb bookings

You cannot, and that is expected. For bookings that come from a channel, the channel collects and handles tourist tax on its own side, and Smoobu has no control over it. Set it in the channel's own settings instead. The Additional Item in Smoobu only applies to bookings made through your own website or the Booking Engine.

Children are charged the tourist tax too

If you set tourist tax as a Required field per-person item, it applies to everyone on the booking, children included. The Booking Engine cannot charge a tax "per adult only". If children should not be charged in your area, you have two options: set the tax to Optional so guests add it for the number of adults themselves, or keep it Required field and ask guests to enter only the adult count and note any children in the Notes field (you can add it to the booking form's contact details under Configuration > Booking Engine > Booking System Settings). Collecting adults and children separately changes the data you collect, not how the tax is calculated.

I need per-age or tiered city tax, or automatic reporting to my municipality

Smoobu's Additional Item is a single rate. It has no age tiers and does not report to a municipality. For full city tax (Kurtaxe) automation, including per-guest and age-based rules and reporting, use a partner integration. In Germany, bnbills calculates, collects, and reports city tax and creates the matching invoice; you find and connect it in the Smoobu Marketplace. Some guest-registration partners also handle city tax as part of their service (see ).

A tourist tax I set to €0 for free guests doesn't show on the booking

Only items with a positive or negative price appear in a booking's details, so a €0 item (for example "children under 2, free") is left out. If you use a €0 item to track free guests, the booking's Number of children field gives you the same information.

Related articles

Still stuck?

If these steps didn't fix it, contact the Smoobu team: open the Help menu to open a ticket or book a call slot, or use the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner. To get the fastest answer, please include:

• Your Smoobu User ID (in the profile-icon menu, top right).
• The property name or ID, if it's about one property.
• The Booking ID, if it's about one booking (Bookings, then View more).
• The channel name, if it's about channel sync (Booking.com, Airbnb, Vrbo, and so on).
• A short step-by-step: what you did, what you expected, and what happened.
• Screenshots or a short screen recording of the problem.
• Your browser and operating system, if something looks wrong on screen.