A hotel for Taylor Swift weekend? Try Glasgow!
Plus: Capital's transport revolution gets stuck in the slow lane; while paying to park at work remains under discussion
Soaring cost of staying in Capital sees fans commute from Glasgow
Taylor Swift fans are booking hotels in Glasgow after seeing the cost of staying in Edinburgh rocket to more than £600 a night for the weekend of her Murrayfield concerts.
The pulling power of the world’s biggest pop star has seen a spike in hotel bookings in Glasgow city centre on 7-9 June where rooms are available for closer to £200 a night despite a 25% surge in prices due to demand.
The cheapest hotel which the Inquirer could find in Edinburgh was a double room at the Holiday Inn on Queensferry Road for £600. The cheapest rooms advertised on Trivago for a number of hotels, including the W Hotel at the St James, were more than £900.
The soaring price of staying in the Capital for the Swift shows will fuel fears about the Fringe accommodation crisis hitting new heights this summer.
The move comes as city councillors rejected calls from the Fringe and others to relax licensing rules for anyone wanting to rent out their home or a room during August.
The Swift Effect: Craig Munroe, general manager of the AC Hotel by Marriott in Glasgow, told The Scottish Sun: “Given our proximity to Queen Street station, we’re seeing the direct benefit of tourists staying in Glasgow and commuting to Edinburgh, not only for Taylor Swift but for other popular events like the Edinburgh Marathon, and during the Fringe too.”
The Fringe crisis: Only 200 people have so far signed up for an exemption to the city’s new short-term let restrictions which would allow them to rent out a room during the Festival. City officials had asked councillors to relax the rules and cut the cost of a temporary license from £250 to £120 to encourage more sign ups, but councillors rejected their recommendation.
‘No evidence’: A number of Labour and Green councillors opposed relaxing the rules, among them Labour councillor Margaret Graham said the appeal to relax the regulations were “not really backed up by evidence apart from a lot of amplification of certain sections of the cultural sector”.
AirBnB says: A statement from Airbnb added: "The average nightly price for booked accommodation on Airbnb during the Edinburgh Fringe is £281, giving locals an opportunity to earn much-needed additional income at a time when accommodation is in high demand. The implementation of short-term let regulations in Scotland is also disrupting the price and availability of accommodations across the board, including a notable increase in hotel prices.”
YOUR EDINBURGH BRIEFING
SHUT ‘EM DOWN: The Ross Bandstand will stay silent for most of the summer after city councillors threw out plans to run up to eight weeks of performances encompassing all the summer Festivals. The council’s incoming Chief Executive - and current director of place - Paul Lawrence had proposed a relaxation of the strict restrictions on events in Princes Street Gardens in recent years. Councillors rejected the idea after objections from among others the conservation charity the Cockburn Association, saying there should be a public consultation first.
KEEP ‘EM OPEN: More than 11,000 people have now signed a petition calling for the Summerhall arts village to be protected after the site was put up for sale. The owners are advertising the entire site for sale in a bid to attract new investment amid growing financial pressures.
SEWAGE PROTEST: Surfers Against Sewage staged a protest at Portobello on Saturday against continued dumping of sewage in the city’s waterways. Charlie Allanson-Oddy, founding member of the Porty Water Collective and SAS regional representative, said: “Walking the beaches in Portobello, the reality of sewage scandal is clear with thousands of baby wipes washed up weekly. Testing has repeatedly found dangerous levels of E.coli and chloroforms in the Figgate Burn. Unlike England and Wales, Scottish Water is publicly owned: however they continue to ignore us."
BEER CHEER: Independent brewery Vault City has taken a step towards its ambition of being the world’s biggest dedicated sour brew producer after raising £330,000 in a crowdfund campaign. The fundraising has allowed the Portobello-founded brewery to open a new home, seven times bigger than its old base and capable of producing 10 million litres of beer a year, at Roslin’s BioCampus.
SPORTS DEVELOPMENT: A sports-led development is being planned for the site of Moray House teacher training college’s former Cramond Campus. Developers AMA (Cramond) Ltd have submitted plans including shops, a care home, a synthetic sports pitch, gym and padel tennis on the fields next to Cramond Road North.
RISING RENTS: Rents across Edinburgh and the Lothians have been among the fastest rising in the UK since the Scottish Government introduced rent controls. Newly advertised rents rose by more than 20% between September, 2022, and March, 2024, to £1,192 per month. The average rise across Scotland (16.5%) was higher than anywhere else in the UK, ahead of those even in London (15.2%). The figures only cover newly advertised rents and excludes those properties where rents are frozen for sitting tenants.
BUS TRACKER: The Capital’s Bus Tracker is expected to start showing real-time information on services at bus stops from the middle of June. The system has been advertising timetables rather than live updates for months, confusing and exasperating passengers, after the council installed a new system which was unable to connect with trackers on the Lothian Buses. Upgraded trackers have not been installed on most of the fleet.
City centre traffic reduction measures delayed
The Capital’s plan to cut city centre traffic are being pushed back by up to a year with the council blaming a lack of Scottish Government funding.
The council was aiming to take general motor traffic off North and South Bridge and the Mound by next Easter but the plans have now been delayed by a year.
The city’s transport leader councillor Scott Arthur blamed the delay - which comes just three months after the plans were approved - on uncertainty over funding. "We've got a huge ambition for the city, but the funding we need from the Scottish Government is just not aligning to it," he said.
At the same time, a trial closure of the Cowgate and Lawnmarket to through traffic has also been pushed back until after the Festival, and may be watered down in the wake of concerns from music venues and other businesses.
Bum note: Venues in the Cowgate, Edinburgh’s music street, were among those to raise concerns about touring bands getting their equipment to and from gigs, while there were also issues around access for late-night taxis. The council is considering making the Cowgate a one-way street instead of blocking it to through traffic.
‘Not just planters’: Councillor Arthur said: “There's a lot of work to do, it's not just as simple as putting planters in.”
Moving target: The delays will raise doubts about the city’s ability to hit its target of reducing motor traffic by 30 per cent by 2030, but will come as a relief to some city centre businesses - particularly in the night time economy - who feared restrictions could deter visitors, affect deliveries and make life more difficult for late shift staff.
THE BUSINESS
Will a new workplace levy be parked by councillors?
Edinburgh businesses will keep an eye fixed on the city council on Thursday when councillors will be asked whether they wish to spend £100,000 employing consultants to progress plans for a Workplace Parking Levy which could generate an estimated £10-£12million per year.
Councillors sitting on the Transport and Environment Committee will look at the results of a major consultation exercise carried out by the council, which went ahead despite transport convener Councillor Scott Arthur urging a pause to investigate what it might mean for shift workers and the low paid. He remains “sceptical” about the WPL impact on reducing congestion, and believes there are issues still requiring to be clarified and addressed, for example around the impact on low-paid and shift workers.
Businesses or their employees would require to pay between £500-750 a year to park at work. Revenue generated for the council would require to be reinvested in delivery of the local transport strategy – and so would largely go towards public transport and active travel.
Nottingham is the only local authority in the UK to have introduced a WPL, in 2012, and the monies raised have helped pay for an extension the city’s tram route and a revamp of the railway station.
More than 2600 responses were gained from the largely online consultation carried out in Edinburgh from November 2023-February 2024, and this included more than 30 from businesses and organisations.
One or two key points raised were that businesses were concerned at the potential introduction of a new levy at a time of a cost of living crisis when many businesses and individuals were struggling financially, and that a blanket policy across the entire city area should not be applied.
The report to councillors states: “Some responses from businesses highlighted that a WPL in Edinburgh would overlap with the introduction of the Low Emission Zone (LEZ), which is due to begin in June 2024. Businesses and employee representative groups were concerned about the potential impact of the additional cost on lower income workers or workers who have no better alternative than the car to travel to work. Others added that a WPL would not be a straightforward policy to apply and that many employers would benefit from support from the Council to better understand their liability...
“70% of respondents did not think a WPL should be applied across the whole local authority boundary, with suggestions including just the city centre, the LEZ or a zoned approach to charging. 29% of all respondents agreed that a WPL should apply across the whole of the local authority area.”
If approved, the next steps will see more focus on how a WPL would be designed and operate, followed by another major consultation exercise.
BARRY SEALEY: Edinburgh’s business community lost one of its larger than life characters last week when Barry Sealey, who co-founded Edinburgh-based Archangel Investors more than 30 years ago, died at the age of 88. Mr Sealey was a pioneer in angel investing in Scotland, launching Archangel with Mike Rutterford in 1992.
TRAM CONTRACT: Edinburgh Trams has awarded an 11-year contract extension worth just under £45 million to Siemens Mobility, in a joint consortium with Bilfinger UK, for the maintenance of Edinburgh Trams infrastructure to 2035. This includes the continuous maintenance of the overhead contact line system, and the track and signalling system of the tram infrastructure network.
GREEN AWARD: Edinburgh International Conference Centre has won a top sustainability award at the Business Travel Awards Europe. The EICC came out tops in the Achievement in Sustainability – Meetings & Events category at the awards ceremony, which took place at Grosvenor House in London.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
CHILDREN’S FESTIVAL: Launching with a free day of pop-up performances and artist interventions in a Family Encounters day at the National Museum of Scotland on Saturday, Imaginate brings a varied programme for children of all ages to venues across the city. With 14 productions representing work from nine different countries and spanning circus, dance, music, storytelling and theatre, Imaginate, the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival runs from Saturday until 2 June.
HADSTOCK: Bringing the streets and venues of Haddington to vibrant life with music, arts and events, East Lothian’s annual Hadstock Festival returns to the town from Friday to Sunday, 24-26 May. This year’s highlights include Karine Polwart’s appearance at Haddington Corn Exchange on Saturday night, supported by Gaze is Ghost (aka singer-songwriter Laura McGarrigle whose influences range from Stravinsky to Talk Talk), and the popular arts trail.
KEEP ON RUNNING: Whether you are running, want to enjoy the spectacle and cheer the brave souls tackling the course, or just want to avoid the crowds and road closures, it’s well worth remembering the Edinburgh Marathon Festival is on Saturday. The route heads out from the city centre down East Lothian coast and back into Musselburgh, with races heading off from 8am. Good luck to everyone taking part.
QUICK BITES
MENU FOR SUCCESS: Top Edinburgh chef Stuart Ralston has been shortlisted for Chef of the Year at the UK National Restaurant Awards. He operates four high-regarded restaurants in the Capital - Aizle, Lyla, Noto, and Tipo. In addition, his latest venture, Lyla, which opened in 2023 in Royal Terrace, has been nominated for Opening of the Year.
PIZZA THE ACTION: UK-based pizza chain Pizza Pilgrims has revealed plans to expand into Scotland with its first pizzeria north of the Border planned for Edinburgh by December this year. The chain has 22 outlets south of the border.