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Edinburgh hoteliers call for longer festivals to bring down room rates
Edinburgh hotel industry leaders call for the city’s main festival season to be extended across the summer to help ease demand for rooms.
They claim the move would bring down prices in August when visitors face paying upwards of £400 to secure a room.
The shortage of hotel rooms is also fuelling the city’s controversial Airbnb market which has now soared to 1.1 million overnight stays or 20% of the city’s visitor market.
Airbnb has revealed 120,000 visitors to the August festivals have booked via its site, earning hosts around £15 million.
The Edinburgh Hotels Association has called for action to be taken to ensure the city becomes a "true year-round destination" in future years. The body claims the city’s tourism infrastructure is under mounting pressure in August because there is "very high demand for a limited supply of accommodation".
Recently Fringe chief executive Shona McCarthy said that the "life-force" of the city’s festivals faces being killed off due to the cost of staying in the city in August. She called for a "city-wide effort and commitment" to help curb the cost of staying in Edinburgh in August.
Edinburgh’s jazz and film festivals have already moved out of their traditional August slots , partly due to the soaring costs of staging the events in the peak period.
A spokesman for the hotels association said "In the same way that demand drives pricing in August upwards, it drives pricing in winter downwards as there is lower demand for the fixed supply of accommodation and market forces cause suppliers to reduce prices to tempt buyers. It is clear that if demand was reduced, the laws of supply and demand would result in lower accommodation prices.
"Holding all festivals in a three-week period creates high demand, so spreading this out through July and August would smooth demand… the target for all should be for the city to have a spread of events throughout the year, which avoids too many large events at the same time. This would result in a sustainable tourism industry with pricing which avoids high peaks and low troughs."
Research carried out by the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society in recent months has found the cost of accommodation in the city in August is the biggest single barrier to participation in the event.
Valere Tjolle
Valere is publisher and editor of Sustainable Tourism 0.2 to be published in September
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