Ministers are today setting out plans to give mayors and other local leaders in England the power to impose a tourist tax on overnight stays, charged as a percentage of the cost of accommodation with no national upper limit.

A flat fee had previously been mooted. The Government has argued that a percentage charge will protect budget holidays, and expects mayors to be able to impose the levy by the end of the Parliament.

Angela Rayner, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, is due to give more details of the proposals at a meeting with mayors at No 10 North later today.

Plans for the tax were first announced under Sir Keir Starmer, following similar schemes introduced by the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales. Prime Minister Andy Burnham reiterated his commitment to the policy in July as part of his wider devolution agenda.

Under proposals published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in November 2025, the levy would apply to visitors at accommodation providers including hotels, holiday lets, bed and breakfasts and guesthouses. Emergency accommodation, homeless shelters and registered Gypsy and Traveller sites used as primary residences would be exempt, and mayors would be able to apply other local exemptions.

Charges of a similar nature already exist across Europe, with the revenue used to fund local services. Mayors would decide how to invest the money raised from the levy.

In Manchester, a City Visitor Charge of £1 per room per night was introduced in April 2023.

Lord Khan, the Mayor of London, has welcomed proposals for a levy in the capital. Modelling by Central London Forward, a partnership of 12 central London local authorities, estimated in January that a 3 per cent charge on the cost of a room could raise more than £350m a year across London.

Lord Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley Mayor, has rejected the idea of a tourist tax.

Groups representing the tourism trade have warned about the impact of the levy and called for consistency in how it operates across different regions.

Allen Simpson, chief executive of UKHospitality, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that a tourism tax introduced in Edinburgh in July is “already having damaging effects”.

He said holidays in the UK are “already more expensive” than they appear because of higher VAT, even before the tourist tax.

“What we’re talking about here is an open-ended power for mayors to set tourism taxes at any level they want,” Mr Simpson said. “And remember that if you go to Paris, if you go to Rome, if you go to Berlin, you’re paying a small tourism tax, but it’s capped.”

He said people in communities which rely on tourism and hospitality would see jobs at risk.

“I would say to those people in these communities that their jobs are now at risk,” Mr Simpson said. “It will be the case that you’ll have holiday parks which can’t open in the shoulder seasons and of course people who go on holiday will just have that little bit less money in their pocket.”

Jon Hendry Pickup, chief executive of Butlin’s, said the levy would hit hardest those who can least afford a holiday.

“Big cities may welcome these mayoral powers, but treating every destination and hospitality business the same will leave resorts like ours to shoulder the burden,” he said.

“We were concerned enough about the impact of a Holiday Tax when the discussion was around 5 per cent or £2 per person per night.

“Giving mayors the power to impose a levy without a national upper limit takes those concerns to another level and risks making family holidays less affordable, damaging demand and making it harder for businesses to hire young people.”

A Government source said mayors were unlikely to make the levy too costly in order to protect their local tourism industry, with most indicating it would be a few per cent.

The source said: “We have always been clear that while central government will set the framework for this power, it will be up to local leaders and local voters to decide what is right for their area.”

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

NEW YORK — AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey did not treat Apple’s first foldable iPhone as a Jobs-era reset. He treated it as another book-style phone in a category his stores have already sold.

“The best characterization I can give is, looking at the foldable phones that have been out in the market, this is not new,” Stankey told Yahoo Finance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech Conference on Wednesday, hours after Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo at $1,999. “Android users are as passionate about Android as iOS users are about iOS,” he said. They are “a smaller percentage of the U.S. market, but they are still passionate, and there’s been some really good foldable devices in the Android ecosystem for a couple years. And what we’ve seen is that it tends to function more as a specific niche type application as opposed to it’s broadly accepted.”

He left the door cracked. “Will iOS users view it differently or will there be some unique take that Apple comes up with that changes that penetration dynamic a little bit? I suppose it’s possible, but my guess right now is we’re going to kind of see it contained to a portion of the user base that wants that larger device and is maybe willing to invest more money to pick it up and get it.” On whether he would carry one: “I’m going to have to see if it replaces something that I use. I’m pretty adept at moving back and forth between my iPad and my mobile device right now. And if it becomes something where it says maybe I don’t need to carry the larger iPad around with me, I might be interested.”

That is a carrier talking about attach rates, not a keynote talking about magic. The Duo folds from a 5.4-inch cover display to a 7.6-inch inner panel with a matching 1:1.4 aspect ratio. Preorders open Oct. 16. Shipments start Oct. 23. Storage runs from 256GB at $1,999 to 2TB at $3,199. Apple CEO John Ternus framed rivals as unfinished work. “Others have created foldables that just feel like two phones awkwardly stuck together,” he said. Of the Duo: “It’s entirely new and at the same time remarkably familiar. A similar size to your passport, it feels familiar to hold and comfortable to use with one hand.”

Samsung spent Wednesday answering with hardware it already has on shelves. The Galaxy Z Fold 8, launched in July at $1,899, is listed at 201 grams. The Duo is listed at 254 grams. Hee-Cheul Moon, a Samsung research lead, told Wired the rivalry was “absolutely welcome” and that “the key to providing the highest customer value in this market is all about the weight of the device.” Seoul put up “Welcome to Foldables” and “The World’s Lightest Fold” billboards and posted lines on X that read as jabs at a late arrival.

Liz Lee, an associate director at Counterpoint Research, called Apple’s sticker the surprise. “Apple’s pricing was one of the most impressive parts. Keeping the iPhone Duo just under the $2,000 mark, at $1,999, and only about $100 above the Galaxy Z Fold 8 looks like a pretty bold move by Apple,” she said. “We expect that Apple will really change the competitive landscape in foldables, and Samsung will see the most visible share pressure. But Samsung also has scale, years of experience and strong global distribution.”

Counterpoint’s 2026 forecast puts Samsung at about 38 percent of global foldable shipments, Apple at 25 percent and Huawei at 22 percent, with Apple’s first-year volume capped near 6 million units by supply, not demand. Lee said even a short selling window would be “a very strong start.” An earlier Counterpoint note had Samsung at 32 percent and Apple at 25 percent depending on the cut of the year. IDC’s Nabila Popal told Wired foldables are still “around 2 percent by the end of this year of the global smartphone market.” In an IDC survey, 60 percent of consumers said they were not likely to buy a foldable at upgrade time — but almost 33 percent said they “absolutely” would if Apple made one. “Apple has such a strong market pull,” Popal said.

Francisco Jeronimo of IDC said Apple “set the price and the standard every rival will now be measured against.” Ben Wood of CCS Insight said Apple “has never been afraid to enter a product category once it has reached a certain level of maturity” and that the Duo “could act as a rising tide for all manufacturers.” Gene Munster of Deepwater Asset Management wrote that the phone is “sick,” with “no seam” and an ultra-thin body, and raised his fiscal 2027 revenue guess from 5 percent of iPhone sales to 10 percent. “They’re going to sell more than I thought before seeing it.”

Those forecasts and Stankey’s niche label can both be true. Foldables remain a sliver of phones and a larger sliver of premium revenue. Counterpoint sees the category rising from about 2.2 percent of global units in 2026 toward 3.1 percent by 2030, with a bigger share of dollars. AT&T will sell the Duo next to Fold 8s and Pixel folds. Stankey’s point is that passion for a hinge has not yet equaled passion for an iPhone.

Apple is selling software defaults — Split View, tent-mode StandBy, a crease it says you can feel but not see — to people who never bought a Galaxy Fold. Samsung is selling seven years of hinges and 53 fewer grams. Stankey is selling whatever customers will finance. His sentence that will follow the Duo into stores is the shortest: this is not new. The $100 gap and the Apple logo are what he is waiting to measure.

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Ingela Ulfves
Vice President of Investor Relations & Financial Communications

Good afternoon, everyone. A warm welcome to Fortum’s webcast for the investor community and today’s announcement of the historical and very significant strategic partnership and long-term PPA that Fortum and Google have signed.

My name is Ingela Ulfves, and I’m heading Investor Relations at Fortum. As always, this event is being recorded, and you will find a replay on our website later today.

With me here in the studio, as you can see, is our President and CEO, Markus Rauramo. Markus will briefly present the key strategic highlights and what this partnership and PPA means for Fortum. And following the presentation, we will then take your questions. We have reserved approximately 30 minutes for this event.

So without further ado, I now hand over to Markus to start.

Markus Rauramo
President & CEO

Thank you very much, Ingela. A warm welcome to this call also from my side. Today, Fortum and Google have announced a historical long-term strategic partnership that represents much more than a commercial agreement. It’s a unique partnership that supports growth, competitiveness and long-term prosperity, not only for Fortum, but also for Finland.

This extensive strategic partnership with Google is deeply founded in our 2 main strategic priorities: to deliver reliable energy to