The Greek tourist tax in 2026: what you actually pay in Kos

Greece charges a Climate Crisis Resilience Fee on every night of accommodation, and it is set per unit per night, not per person. From 1 April to 31 October, furnished rooms and studios to rent are charged €2.00 a night, a 4 star hotel €10.00 and a villa €15.00. You pay it at check-out, not when you book, which is why it did not appear in the total on your booking platform. Here is the full table for both seasons, worked out over a week.

What the Climate Crisis Resilience Fee is

The charge people call the Greek tourist tax has a formal name: the Climate Crisis Resilience Fee, shortened in Greek to TAKK. It replaced the older accommodation levy that visitors will remember from earlier trips, and it works on the same basic principle, a fixed amount per night that has nothing to do with what you paid for the room.

The legal basis is Law 5073/2023, article 30. The rates currently in force were set by Law 5162/2024, and they are unchanged for 2026. So if you stayed in Greece last year, the number on your check-out slip this year will be the same for the same category of accommodation.

The name tells you what it is for. We are not going to pretend we can trace where each euro lands, because we cannot. What we can do is tell you exactly what you will be charged, when, and why, which is the part that affects your week.

Per unit per night, not per person

This is the single most misunderstood thing about the fee, and getting it right will change your budget. The charge attaches to the accommodation unit and to the night. It does not multiply by the number of people sleeping in that unit.

Two adults and two children in one studio pay the same as one person alone in the same studio. A couple who book one studio pay once per night. A family who book two studios pay twice per night, because that is two units. Nobody counts heads at check-out.

It also does not scale with your room rate. A quiet week in May and a busy week in August in the same category of accommodation carry an identical fee. The only two things that move the number are the category of the property and the time of year.

The full 2026 rate table

High season runs from 1 April to 31 October. Low season is 1 November to 31 March. These are the rates set by Law 5162/2024 and they apply across Greece, so they are the same in Kos as in Athens or Crete.

Read the first row and the last row together, because the gap between them is the story. A studio in the rooms to rent band is charged €2.00 a night in high season. A villa or a large holiday home is charged €15.00 for the same night. The bed is not seven times better.

What a 7 night stay actually costs

A single night figure is easy to wave away. Seven of them in a row is what you will actually hand over, so here is the same table multiplied out for a standard week.

Two worked cases from the sort of booking we see every week. A couple in one studio, seven nights in July: €14.00 for the whole stay, settled on the last morning. A family of four in two studios for the same week: €28.00, because that is two units for seven nights.

Now the comparison that matters. That same family of four in one villa for seven July nights pays €105.00. The difference is €77.00, which in Kardamena is three or four taverna dinners for two. None of that is a reason to choose one kind of holiday over another, but it is worth knowing before you decide that a villa is only slightly more expensive.

The season line, and stays that cross it

The two seasons are fixed by the calendar, not by the weather and not by whether the beach bars are still open. High season ends on 31 October. Low season begins on 1 November.

If your stay crosses that line, the nights are charged at the rate that applied to each one. Check in on 29 October and out on 3 November in a studio in the rooms to rent band, and you pay €2.00 for the nights of 29, 30 and 31 October, then €0.50 for the nights of 1 and 2 November. That is €7.00 for five nights instead of €10.00. It is a small sum, but it is the sort of thing worth understanding rather than querying at the desk. October is a genuinely good month here for other reasons too, which we go into in our month by month guide to the best time to visit Kos.

Why your booking total did not include it

You booked, you paid, the total looked final, and then somebody told you there is a tax to pay on arrival. Nothing has gone wrong and no one is inventing a charge.

The fee is a state charge on the accommodation unit, collected on site and passed on. It is not part of the room rate, so it sits outside the amount the booking platform processes. Most platforms do disclose it, usually under a heading along the lines of extra charges not included in the total, well below the big number you actually looked at. Some bury it in the property's fine print. Very few make it prominent, because prominent extra charges cost them bookings.

The same applies when you book direct with any property in Greece, including us. Nobody can fold this into a room rate, because it is not theirs to fold in. What a good property can do is tell you the exact figure for your dates before you travel, so the last morning holds no arithmetic. That is what we do, and it is one of the quieter reasons to book direct alongside the early-booking discount and partner offers.

Paying it: when, how and what to ask

It is collected at check-out. Not at booking, not on arrival, and not by the platform. On your last morning the property adds up the nights, applies the rate for its category, and takes the total.

Three questions worth asking on arrival rather than on departure. What will the total be for my stay, so there is no surprise on the last morning. Would you rather I paid it in cash or on card, because plenty of small family-run places prefer cash for a sum of this size and it saves an awkward pause. And can I have a receipt for it, which you should be able to get if you need one for an expenses claim.

Ask all three on arrival, while you are already talking about towels and where the good bakery is. It takes fifteen seconds and it clears the only piece of admin standing between you and the airport, which from here is a short enough drive to leave room for a slow breakfast. We cover that in our guide to getting between Kos airport and Kardamena.

Who does not pay

The most useful answer here is structural rather than a list. Because the fee attaches to the unit and the night, there is no per-person exemption to chase. Children do not add to it. A third or fourth adult does not add to it. An infant in a cot does not add to it. There is nothing to claim, because nobody is being counted.

What we will not do is publish a list of personal exemptions we cannot verify, because getting that wrong would cost somebody money or an argument at a desk. If you believe your circumstances are unusual, ask the property directly and ask them to check before you arrive. A property that collects this fee every day of the season is a better source on your specific case than any blog, ours included.

How to find your band without guessing

Everything about your rate follows from one thing: the category the property is registered under. Not how nice it looks in the photographs, not how much you paid, not what the listing headline calls it.

Start with your booking confirmation. It should name the type of accommodation you have booked. The words that matter are rooms to rent, a hotel with a star rating, a short-term rental apartment, a holiday home or a villa. Each of those sits on a different line of the table above, and the difference between two of those lines can be €91.00 over a week.

If the confirmation is vague, message the property and ask which category it is registered under and what the nightly fee will be for your dates. Any legitimate business answers that in one line without hesitating. If you are looking at what a studio actually includes before you decide, ours are set out on our rooms page.

Where it sits in a week's budget

Some perspective, because it is easy to leave a page about tax feeling worse than you arrived. For two people in one studio in high season, €14.00 covers the whole week. That is less than one taverna dinner for two, which runs at about €20 to €25 as of the 2026 season, and a little more than one cocktail each.

A villa week at €105.00 is a real line in a budget and deserves planning for. Either way, put the figure in your spending money before you fly. We break down what a week here genuinely costs, from the bakery to the sunbeds, in how much spending money you need for a week in Kardamena.

That is the whole thing. Per unit, per night, paid at check-out, €2.00 for a studio in the rooms to rent band between April and October. Check your confirmation for your own category, ask on arrival what the total will be, and then forget about it for the rest of the week.

Last updated: August 2026