Greece Tourist Tax 2026: A Complete Guide

Rates last verified: 29 July 2026, against the official AADE Climate Resilience Fee FAQ.

Greece’s tourist tax, officially called the Climate Resilience Fee, is a mandatory nightly charge on hotel rooms, villas and short-term rentals across the country. It’s billed per room, per night — never per person — at rates from €0.50 to €15, depending on star rating and season. A separate Cruise Sustainable Tourism Fee applies to cruise passengers, and the two charges are calculated completely differently, so it’s worth understanding both before you budget for a trip.

TL;DR — Key Takeaways

• Greece’s accommodation tax is the Climate Resilience Fee, charged per room, per night (not per person), from €0.50 to €15 depending on star rating and season.
• High season (1 April–31 October) rates run roughly 3–4× higher than low season (1 November–31 March) rates.
• The Cruise Sustainable Tourism Fee (from 21 July 2025) is a completely separate, per-person charge — up to €20 per person at Santorini and Mykonos.
• You pay the accommodation fee at the property, in cash or by card — it’s not included in your Booking.com, Airbnb or tour-operator price.
• No rate increase has been announced for 2026 — current rates have held since the early-2025 increase.

How much do villas, apartments and other short-term rentals pay?

Short-term rentals, furnished apartments and villas pay a size- and type-based tier of the Climate Resilience Fee, separate from the hotel star system. Rates run roughly €1.50–€15 per night in high season and €0.50–€4 in low season, with larger detached properties over about 80m² sitting at the top tier.

Furnished rooms and apartments are certified under a “key” rating rather than a hotel star rating, again issued by the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels. Self-catering furnished tourist villas and tourist residences typically land in the top bracket — the same €15 (high season) / €4 (low season) rate as 5★ hotels — while smaller short-term rentals and apartments sit in intermediate tiers. Exact mid-tier size cut-offs vary slightly between secondary sources, so if you’re renting a specific property, ask the host or check the listing for the fee it actually charges rather than relying on a general size rule.

Airbnb-type short-term rentals fall under this fee through a separate piece of legislation — article 111 of Law 4446/2016 combined with article 39A of the Income Tax Code (Law 4172/2013) — which is also what requires these properties to register for an AMA property number before they can legally list.

Since October 2025, short-term rental hosts have faced additional obligations layered on top of the fee itself: minimum liability insurance, and electrical and fire-safety standards, on top of the existing AMA registration and monthly fee-declaration requirements. Athens has separately restricted new short-term-rental licences in central districts such as Omonia and Syntagma — an overtourism measure distinct from the Climate Resilience Fee, but one that’s reshaping the city’s rental supply alongside it.

Is there a separate tax for cruise ship passengers?

Yes — Greece’s Cruise Sustainable Tourism Fee, launched 21 July 2025, charges cruise passengers per person, per port call. Santorini and Mykonos charge €20 in peak season (June–September), €12 in shoulder months (April–May and October), and €4 off-peak; all other Greek ports charge €5, €3 and €1 respectively.

This is a genuinely separate entity from the Climate Resilience Fee, not a variant of it. Before July 2025, cruise passengers who never stayed overnight in Greek accommodation fell completely outside the tourist-tax system — the Cruise Sustainable Tourism Fee closed that gap for the first time. We’ve covered the launch and its early reception in more detail in our piece on Greece’s new cruise passenger tax.

The only stated exemption is for infants under two years old. Everyone else disembarking at a Greek port pays the fee, typically bundled into the cruise line’s port charges rather than collected individually on the dock. Policy oversight for the maritime side sits with the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy, currently led by Vasilis Kikilias — who also served as Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection from 2023 to 2025, the period when the Climate Resilience Fee itself was restructured, and as Minister of Tourism from 2021 to 2023.

If you’re travelling on a package holiday to Greece rather than cruising, the Climate Resilience Fee still applies to your hotel stay — package prices rarely include it, since it’s collected locally at the property rather than through the tour operator. Piraeus, the country’s main cruise gateway near Athens, falls into the “other ports” tier rather than the Santorini/Mykonos premium tier.

Who has to pay — and who’s exempt?

Every paying guest at hotels, furnished apartments, villas and registered short-term rentals owes the Climate Resilience Fee. Exemptions cover complimentary or free stays, private homes with no collection mechanism, long-term leases, and airline crew on active duty rosters — children are not formally exempt, though the per-room basis means families pay no extra per child.

That last point resolves one of the most common points of confusion. Because the fee attaches to the room rather than the guest, a family of four sharing one room pays exactly the same nightly rate as a solo traveller in an identical room — there’s no per-child or per-extra-guest surcharge, even though children aren’t listed as a formal exemption category the way infants are under the cruise fee.

A few destination-specific questions come up repeatedly:

• Does Athens have a tourist tax? Yes — the same nationwide rate structure applies. The fee is set uniformly by category across the whole country rather than city-by-city, so Athens hotels charge the same rate as an equivalent-star hotel anywhere else in Greece.
• Is there a tourist tax in Greece for Airbnb? Yes, provided the property is a registered short-term rental with an AMA number — see the rates and size tiers above.
• What about a genuinely private home stay, with no commercial booking involved? There’s no collection mechanism for that scenario, so no fee applies.

Filing responsibility sits with the accommodation provider or host, not the guest directly. Properties must declare and remit the fee to AADE monthly, even though it’s the guest who actually hands over the money at check-out.

How and when do you actually pay it?

You pay the Climate Resilience Fee directly at your accommodation, typically at check-in or check-out, by cash or card — never through Booking.com, Airbnb or your tour operator. The property issues a special collection receipt and must declare and remit the fee to AADE monthly through the myAADE portal.

In practice, this means the fee almost never appears in the headline price you see when booking online. It shows up as a separate line item on your final bill, calculated by multiplying the nightly rate for your room category by the number of nights you stayed. Keep the receipt — it’s your evidence the fee was collected, and useful if a dispute ever arises over double-charging.

If you’re wondering exactly how the mechanics work: the accommodation collects the fee from guests throughout the month, then files a single consolidated declaration with AADE covering everyone who stayed, rather than remitting each payment individually as it’s collected.

How does Greece’s tourist tax compare with other European destinations?

Greece’s combined hotel tax burden — VAT, the Climate Resilience Fee and labour costs together — equals roughly 29.8% of gross room revenue for a 4★ hotel charging €150 a night, nearly double Cyprus’s 16.1%, according to joint research from INSETE and PwC. That gap has made the fee a recurring flashpoint in Greek tourism-industry debate.

Standard VAT on Greek accommodation sits at 13%, reduced to 9% on small islands with populations under 20,000 — itself a meaningful cost difference before the Climate Resilience Fee is even added. SETE, the Greek Tourism Confederation, has publicly criticised the cumulative burden through its president, Yiannis Paraschis, with the issue raised again at the SETE Assembly in May 2026 alongside further INSETE competitiveness research.

Other major European destinations — Barcelona, Rome, Venice, Paris and Amsterdam among them — run their own tourist-tax systems, but the structures differ meaningfully: some charge per person rather than per room, some scale by a percentage of the room rate rather than a flat nightly fee, and collection rules vary by city rather than applying nationwide the way Greece’s fee does. That structural difference is part of why direct city-to-city comparisons of headline rates can be misleading without accounting for how each system is actually calculated.

Greece’s own 2025 draft budget projected around €250 million a year in combined revenue from the accommodation fee increases and the new cruise levy — money the government has earmarked specifically for climate-resilience projects rather than general tourism-sector spending.

Frequently asked questions

How much is tourist tax in Greece? Between €0.50 and €15 per room, per night, depending on star rating and season — 1–2★ hotels pay €2 (high season) or €0.50 (low season), rising to €15/€4 for 5★ hotels and villas.

Is Greek tourist tax per person or per room? Per room. The rate is fixed by accommodation category regardless of how many guests share the room.

How much is tourist tax in Greece for a 4-star hotel? €10 per room, per night in high season (1 April–31 October), and €3 per room, per night in low season (1 November–31 March).

Do you pay tourist tax on a package holiday to Greece? Yes. The Climate Resilience Fee is collected locally at your hotel, separately from whatever you paid your tour operator, so it applies regardless of how you booked.

How much is the Santorini and Mykonos cruise tax? €20 per person in peak season (June–September), €12 in shoulder months (April–May and October), and €4 off-peak — charged per port call under the Cruise Sustainable Tourism Fee, separate from the hotel-based Climate Resilience Fee.

Does the tourist tax in Greece apply to children? There’s no formal child exemption, but because the fee is charged per room rather than per person, travelling with children doesn’t add anything to the bill beyond the standard room rate.

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Rates and rules can change. This guide reflects the official AADE Climate Resilience Fee FAQ and current Greek legislation as of the verification date above — always check the AADE FAQ or your accommodation’s front desk for the exact figure before you travel.

Planning a Greek trip? Check your hotel or rental’s official star or key rating before you book, budget an extra €0.50–€15 a night per room on top of the advertised price, and keep your receipt at check-out. If your itinerary includes a Santorini or Mykonos cruise stop, read our full breakdown of Greece’s cruise passenger tax for exactly what that adds to the cost.