Kevin Miller considers himself a little bit of a journey professional. The photographer says he’s ready to match all of his digital camera gear into a carry-on bag and mentally places himself into “airplane mode” as quickly as he closes the door on his taxi, a course of singularly pointed at getting himself via the airport as rapidly and effectively as doable.
But on one fateful day in Bali in 2013, his ordinary machine-level precision hit an surprising wrinkle. He’d checked in, chosen a seat, spent the final of his Indonesian rupiah on a memento within the airport, and zoomed via the safety line. Then he was requested to pay a departure payment.
Miller admits he was pissed off however rapidly set to work getting the cash — it had to be money — he wanted to exit the airport. But it was early within the morning and the foreign money trade counters had been but to open, and not one of the ATMs had been functioning. Finally, an American vacationer took pity on him and handed Miller the wanted payments. When he requested to get the person’s enterprise card to repay him later, the person shook his head and stated he’d been in the identical scenario earlier than.
“It felt like a curveball because it came out of nowhere,” Miller says. Due to the additional time spent working across the airport, he and his spouse missed their flight to Kuala Lumpur.
“We had to catch the next flight, which we had to pay for, because it was an airport issue and not an airline issue.”
Thousands of passengers pay departure taxes day-after-day, however most do not know. While some nations nonetheless ask for money in hand from vacationers as they leave the airport, most of those fees are baked into the price of airline tickets. Indonesia, the place Miller had his hectic expertise, moved to this technique in 2014.
These fees, although, are frequent. Most departure taxes go towards infrastructure initiatives, together with sustaining the very airports they’re collected in.
According to a report launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), airports around the globe collected a complete of $60.4 billion in departure taxes and different comparable fees in 2024, a mean of $6.80 per passenger. Generally, these fees are highest in North America and lowest in Asia-Pacific.
In 2024, Argentina charged the very best price, amounting to a mean of $138 per passenger, in accordance to IATA. Behind it had been Mauritius, Mexico, the UK, the Dominican Republic, the US, Egypt and Kenya.
Are these fees price it? IATA would say no.
“Air ticket taxes are regressive in nature and may conflict with broader economic and social objectives as they place a significant burden on the traveling public, and do not meaningfully contribute to the government’s budgets,” says the group in its report, which was launched in November 2025.
In the journey business, fees like these have develop into a main speaking level within the post-pandemic years, as rising overtourism continues to pressure sources around the globe.
Japan, which has been scuffling with current will increase in customer numbers, debuted a “sayonara tax” of 1,000 yen (about $6) in 2019 and has simply introduced plans to triple it. This price is added to airline ticket costs, not collected in particular person.
These vacationer fees have totally different names everywhere in the world and aren’t centralized, making it tougher for vacationers to know what precisely they’re paying for.
In Australia’s airports, it’s known as a Passenger Movement Charge and prices $70AUD ($40 US). In the UK, the Air Passenger Duty varies primarily based on vacation spot, with a most of £253 ($336) for long-haul flights. In Mexico, it’s the TUA (Tarifa de Uso de Aeropuerto) and every airport will get to set its personal price.
Some locations, although, have determined these fees aren’t price it. Sweden abolished its air journey tax final yr. It was a part of a bigger effort to do away with some short-haul flight routes and encourage individuals to journey by practice or ferry as a substitute.
“As tourists, we have to be mindful that we put a lot of strain on resources. We’re using water, we are using electricity, we are using the roads, and they do need to kind of offset that,” says Anna Abelson, a hospitality professor at New York University.
While there are nonetheless some locations that need money in hand, Abelson says that such experiences — just like the one Miller went via in Bali — have a tendency to be unpopular with vacationers.
As the professor says, forking over cash earlier than having the ability to board their airplane “creates friction.” It upsets vacationers who don’t need to really feel like they’re paying a bribe, or who don’t need their final reminiscence of an in any other case lovely vacation to be one like Kevin Miller’s, of frantically dashing across the airport in hope of discovering a working ATM.
In her expertise, vacationers usually don’t thoughts paying these fees in the event that they know upfront precisely what they’re paying for. Transparency, she says, is essential.
“Destinations should be more upfront, more creative, and really explaining why it’s happening and why they need it.”
Abelson cites the Palau Pledge for instance of how a authorities can positively introduce a vacationer payment to vacationers.
The tiny island nation close to the Philippines solely will get a few thousand vacationers yearly. But the country’s deep dedication to environmental safety led it to create a pledge that each customer should signal and agree to earlier than being allowed into the country.
The Palau Pledge, which is stamped into their passport, opens with: “Children of Palau, I take this pledge, as your guest, to preserve and protect your beautiful and unique island home. I vow to tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully.”
But the pledge isn’t simply a pinky-swear. Visitors who’re discovered to be in violation might be fined as a lot as a million {dollars}.
Even probably the most skilled vacationers might be caught out of hand with in-person vacationer taxes.
Abelson, for instance, realized she was out of money and wanted to pay an in-person exit payment on the airport on a current trip to Saint Lucia.
She ended up borrowing the cash from another person in her group.