Guide · Edinburgh visitor levy
The 5-night cap: how to work out the 6th night onwards
The Edinburgh visitor levy only applies to the first 5 nights in a row of each booking. On your return, you deduct the revenue from the 6th night onwards, using the actual price of those nights. The cleaning fee stays with the first 5 nights.
A worked example
A guest stays 7 nights, Saturday to Saturday. Prices change through the week, and there's an £80 cleaning fee. The prices below don't include the levy.
| Night | Date | Price | Counts for the levy? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sat | £150.00 | Yes |
| 2 | Sun | £120.00 | Yes |
| 3 | Mon | £110.00 | Yes |
| 4 | Tue | £110.00 | Yes |
| 5 | Wed | £110.00 | Yes |
| 6 | Thu | £120.00 | No |
| 7 | Fri | £150.00 | No |
| Cleaning fee | £80.00 | Yes | |
| Total paid | £950.00 | ||
- Revenue from accommodation: £950.00
- Revenue from the 6th night onwards: £120.00 + £150.00 = £270.00
- Liable revenue: £950.00 − £270.00 = £680.00
- Levy at 5%: £34.00
Don't average it. Splitting the nights evenly (£870 ÷ 7 × 2 = £248.57) would be wrong. The council's guidance says the cap is based on the actual value of the first 5 nights.
Where to find the nightly prices
- Booking.com: open the reservation in the extranet. The price breakdown lists the price for each night.
- Airbnb: open the reservation, click the total ("Total for 7 nights"), and read the Guest paid side.
Booking downloads only give one total per booking, so for long stays you need to look up the nights.
If your nightly prices include the levy
Some platforms show nightly prices with the levy already added. Take the levy out of nights 6 onwards before you add them up. If the booking shows the total levy charged, share it across the nights in proportion to each night's price, then remove each night's share.
Booking.com charges guests for every night
Booking.com can't apply the 5-night cap. If your city tax is set as a percentage, guests on longer stays are charged the levy on nights 6, 7 and beyond as well. You only pay the council on the first 5 nights, so those guests have overpaid. I'm refunding my own guests, even though none of them asked.
Each booking is separate
The cap applies per booking. If a guest makes two separate 4-night bookings back to back, the council's guidance says both are charged in full.
Let ChatGPT or Claude walk you through it
My free guide shows you how to do it yourself, and includes a prompt that walks you through every long stay, works out the 6th night onwards and checks it against what the guest paid.
Sources: City of Edinburgh Council, Visitor Levy Scheme guidance (Version 2, August 2026); the visitorlevy.scot return form help text. This is general help with the process, not tax advice.