For Terry Levinthal, the question is not if Edinburgh 's residents take drastic action against the growing number of tourists in their city, but when."As the city gets busier and busier, I don’t think we’re that far behind something happening in Edinburgh to really bring this to the fore,” says the director of the Cockburn Association. “Whether that’s a mass protest, I don’t know.
Nobody is saying we need to stop tourism, but by God, we need to start managing it.” Advertisement Advertisement Sign up to the weekly Cost Of Living newsletter. Saving tips, deals and money hacks.
Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Edinburgh has long been one of the great success stories of Scottish and British tourism – a scenic, pedestrian-friendly capital city with a rich history and heritage, top drawer attractions, and an internationally renowned portfolio of cultural events. But at what point does the city’s status as a global visitor destination reach a tipping point? In recent weeks and months, other tourist hotspots across Europe have been paying the price for their success, with local communities in the likes of Mallorca and Greece drawing a line in the sand, and warning authorities the decades-long economic pursuit of international visitor spending has become unsustainable.
With tensions also felt in city hotspots such as Barcelona, Venice, and Amsterdam, there are growing questions about the impact of tourists in Edinburgh, which has long been the most popular city or town in Britain amongst visitors outside of London. For years, the growth of tourists coming to the city, and the way that demand is managed, has sparked considerable debate. But there is a sense the issue may be coming to a head.
The city, which has a population of around 530,000, welcomes around four million domestic and international visitors annually. But to truly understand how that scale was achieved, and how quickly, data compiled by Office of National Statistics (ONS) provides an instructive insight. A decade of remarkable growth in tourist number s The most authoritative figures detailing inbound visitor numbers, known as the International Passenger Survey (IPS), shows that at the turn of the millennium in 1999, there were 980,000 so-called "staying visits” to Edinburgh.
That number fell to 770,000 in 2003, before the next decade saw the figure climb to 1.33 million and 1.34 million in 2007 and 2009 respectively, before falling back slightly to 1.
31 million in 2013. Since then, however, the trend has been one of dizzying growth. The year 2018 heralded a peak of 2.
51 million before Covid-19’s impact began to be felt. Even so, the 2023 numbers demonstrated the extent of Edinburgh’s comeback, with 2.32 million such visits – a 136 per cent increase on the 1999 figure.
All are undoubtedly impressive figures, but some have raised fears the council and other authorities have gone too far in prioritising tourism over the city’s own residents. According to Mr Levinthal, such sentiments are becoming more common. He said there were legitimate concerns that unless tensions surrounding the focus on “tourism growth for growth’s sake” were addressed, the situation was at risk of deteriorating.
“From what we can see, certainly on social media, is an increase in rhetoric against tourists,” he explained. “Only a few days ago, we came across someone calling for direct action on tourists. It’s a sign of how people are beginning to think.
” Advertisement Advertisement Few other cities can match Edinburgh’s growth, both in the short and medium term. Glasgow’s “staying visits” saw just a 31 per cent increase between 1999 and 2023, while London saw a 54 per cent spike, up from 13.17 million to 20.
3 million. Indeed, the only cities to record bigger increases over that 24-year period were Manchester and Liverpool, places embarking on post-industrial transformations. According to the City of Edinburgh Council, the benefits of Edinburgh’s allure are numerous and plentiful.
Tourism, it says, sustains over 30,000 jobs, bringing in £2.7 billion worth of visitor spend each year, with the festivals alone supporting over 7,000 full-time equivalent jobs and contributing £407 million to the local economy. Concerns over ‘growth for growth’s sake’ Mr Levinthal believes key decisions that have been taken have helped foster such tensions, pointing to the “untrammelled expansion” of Airbnbs in the city.
“Whilst tourism growth was increasing, we weren’t seeing the infrastructure of the city being expanded to manage visitor numbers,” he says. “Indeed, we’re seeing what could be seen as negative forces at play.” The latter issue is also one of significant concern to Aditi Jehangir, chair of the Living Rent tenants’ union, who said the “explosive growth” in tourism over the past decade has caused a proliferation of short-term lets .
“We need a city that works for the people, not just the people passing through,” she says. “Edinburgh’s residents are already angry.” “Edinburgh is the big Scottish success story post-pandemic,” said Professor John Lennon, director of the Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development at Glasgow Caledonian University.
“Its recovery has been fastest and most significant.” However, Prof Lennon wonders whether Edinburgh could really see the kind of demonstrations that have been witnessed elsewhere in European hotspots this summer. “Will Morningside take to the streets?” he says.
“That’s a good question. What’s the normal behaviour pattern that occurs during the festival? People either close up their flats and head on holiday, or let them out. The behaviour seems to be avoidance rather than protest, but it’s hard to predict what will happen.
” Tourism of ‘huge importance’ to city economy Any suggestion the City of Edinburgh Council has taken its eye off the ball and prioritised tourism above all else is forcibly rejected by its leader, Cammy Day . He describes it as a “privilege” that so many people want to visit his “beautiful city”, and recognises the “huge importance” of tourism to the economy. But he adds: “We also acknowledge the impact this has on our residents and that we take the need to manage that extremely seriously.
That’s why our tourism strategy remains focused on managing growth responsibly, not driving it, and is about making the experience of tourism better for everyone, including our residents who live here all year round. Advertisement Advertisement “One of the ways we can do this is to better manage the number and quality of short-term lets in the city, and our new policies are designed with the specific aim of bringing properties back into residential use.” That approach is one echoed by Donald Emslie, chair of Edinburgh Tourism Action Group, who said the responsible management of tourism in the city “underpins” the Edinburgh 2030 Tourism Strategy .
“The industry remains committed to working in partnership to deliver the strategy’s aims, to help ensure that tourism works for everyone in the city,” he says. Cllr Day also points to how the council has “campaigned hard” for a visitor levy he says has the potential to generate millions of pounds to reinvest back into the city, both for the benefit of visitors and residents. His administration is working with the tourism industry and other partners to introduce the levy by “early summer 2026”.
Warning that international visitors are ‘price resistant’ But will such a measure ease the pressure brought about by tourism? Some have warned the tax would be a sticking plaster over deeper problems and call for more fundamental shifts in policy, such as stronger enforcement of short-term let regulation, rent controls, and investment in social housing . According to Prof Lennon, an expert in the field, it is unlikely a visitor levy would have a significant impact. “There are obviously transient visitor levies and tourism taxes in various parts of the world – New York has had a tax for a long time, and Manchester introduced a type of levy on hotel rooms some time ago,” he says.
“Neither of those cities have seen significant resistance to demand, and in Venice, where there is a tax, the crowds are still going. “I think international visitors are quite price resistant. None of the figures I’ve heard, in my view, are going to have a significant impact on the amount of visitors coming to Edinburgh.
” For his part, Prof Lennon said the trick was staggering demand, and ensuring the extraordinary popularity of the festival is felt further afield in other Scottish cities as part of an approach promoting different regions. “I think it should be Scotland’s festival, and not just Edinburgh’s,” he said. “Imaginative, creative solutions are about marketing the rest of Scotland, and that’s where the national tourism organisation has a role to play.
“The advantage Scotland has is it’s relatively small. You can get away from Edinburgh to the Borders and have a very different experience of rural, small-town Scotland. The problem is that cities are an easy sell to tourists, we’ve made them much better to orient around, and Edinburgh is particularly pedestrian friendly.
” Advertisement Advertisement Those who closely scrutinise the impact of tourism believe there are other steps that can be taken. Dr Patrizia Riganti, professor in tourism at the University of Glasgow’s school of social and environmental sustainability, said Edinburgh’s overtourism challenges were no different to those facing Venice and Barcelona. “We need to deal with the fact that there is an excessive demand for certain places, we need to have a different approach to tourism, one that is sustainable and based around the concept of a circular economy,” she reasoned.
“It is the model of tourism that needs to change, and that can have a positive impact on the local economy and the condition of life of residents, who need to be involved.” Comments Want to join the conversation? Please register or log in to comment on this article..
