'Do we want Edinburgh as a Harry Potter theme park?'
Regularly ranking among the world's best cities, boasting postcard-worthy views around virtually every corner, and hosting the globe's largest performing arts festival, The Fringe - alongside increasingly bustling Christmas markets - the city has become a year-round tourist destination for culture vultures, influencers, history buffs, and Harry Potter fans alike.
This supports tens of thousands of jobs, stimulates significant investment in business and keeps Edinburgh squarely on the global map. But for the local population, especially in the city centre where the majority of visitors congregate, it often means overcrowded streets, an escalating cost of living and strained infrastructure.
Balancing the mass tourism driving what some call Edinburgh's 'Disneyfication' - or perhaps more accurately, its Potterfication - with the needs of residents remains a key challenge for the city. The introduction of the UK's first Transient Visitor Levy (TVL), or 'tourist tax', comes as a direct response to these pressures. However, it is unlikely to be a silver bullet.
In the second of an exclusive two-part interview for The Herald's series looking at the Future of Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh Council's leader Jane Meagher and chief executive Paul Lawrence reflected on the impact of tourism and opportunities of the forthcoming visitor levy.
Councillor Meagher acknowledged there are a 'whole lot of issues relating to the city centre' as a result of Edinburgh's strong visitor economy.
'One concern is about managing what kind of city centre we want this to be,' she said, adding: 'Do we want it to be a Harry Potter theme park or do we want it to be a living city centre where people live and work?
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'That's where things like the visitor levy come in. Clearly, one of the aims of the visitor levy is to make the visitor experience more sustainable.
'What that means is providing visitors with a reason to move outwith the city centre and go and visit Lauriston Castle, Craigmillar Castle, go and visit the other World Heritage Site out at Queensferry and take advantage of the shorefront that people can enjoy.
'What tends to happen is some people congregate around the Royal Mile to the exclusion of even places like the Botanical Gardens, so part of the visitor levy is going to be to make what we're packaging as sustainable.
'In other words, not concentrating on the middle of the city.
'As well as thinking about the city centre we need to bear in mind there are areas outwith the city centre that will become in their own right visitor venues. The Granton Gasholder is a recent excellent example of that park and its attractions.'
The proliferation of city centre gift shops, sometimes dubbed 'tartan tat' retailers, is a hot button issue for locals in Edinburgh who complain about a lack of essential amenities like grocery stores in the centre of town.
On this point, Meagher said: 'I think there's an overprovision of certain types of shop. I have friends, some of whom live at the foot of the Royal Mile, and it is quite difficult to find corner shops. I think we need a better mix.'
Mr Lawrence agreed there are 'too many of a certain kind of retail offer in certain places' and said it was 'clear to see' this needed rebalancing. However, the council's chief officer contended Edinburgh has 'the best blend of restaurants, pubs and shops in the UK by a mile'.
He said: 'A lot of places suffer from only having chain pubs, restaurants and so on. We have a thriving independent sector, which through the visitor levy we also want to support. So if you look at the diversity as a whole, walk from here to Leith, and in Leith Walk we have one of the most exciting streets in the UK. I think the mix compared to others is spectacular.
'If you're on the Royal Mile you can be at a Lidl on Nicolson Street in five minutes, that's not the case in most places.
'But are there pockets where there are over concentrations of a certain kind of provision? Of course there are.'
This issue was debated in the City Chambers last year after a councillor said the number of gift shops on the Royal Mile in council-owned commercial units had become "embarrassing,' and complained the capital's 'window on the world has a See You Jimmy Hat in it'.
Lawrence said: 'If we own something then we can decide who to lease it to. So, for example, if we want to ensure that some of our properties are used for charitable or social purposes we can, but the council has a policy of no concessionary lets on our property estate because our property estate cross-subsidies some of the council's core services, so there is a consequence.
'Both as a property owner, as a licensing authority and a planning authority we have a lot of policies that dig into these issues, and like most things there's always a balance involved in all of this.'
Another ongoing challenge for the authority is reducing traffic levels while increasing pedestrian space to handle heavy footfall. Questions persist over how the council plans to meet its target to cut car kilometres driven in the city by 30% by 2030, especially after the Scottish Government recently ditched its less ambitious target of 20%. Meanwhile, plans to remove through traffic from key city centre roads including the North and South Bridges and The Mound were delayed last year due to a lack of funding from the Scottish Government.
The Royal Mile (Image: Colin Mearns) At the time, former transport convener Scott Arthur said it was 'not just as simple as putting planters in,' while senior officer Gareth Barwell added it was 'very hard to go cheap and nasty' in a World Heritage Site'. However, the slow progress to make the centre of Edinburgh more pedestrian friendly and less congested has made some question how committed the council is to implementing changes.
Lawrence highlighted the closures of the Old Town's Cockburn Street and Victoria Street to through traffic 'at little or no cost because we have not done large scale new street designs'.
He said: 'We've simply said you can't drive your car down there anymore and some people have agreed with that and some people have disagreed with that.
'There's somewhere like George Street, potentially the finest street in Edinburgh, one of the finest streets in the UK, where I don't think that approach would be right.
'We have a scheme from Meadows to George Street which would improve the public realm significantly. We're under a lot of pressure, and understandably so, from organisations like Living Streets to improve the pavement experience both in the city centre and elsewhere.
'In a World Heritage centre, that has to be done right. And that's not cheap.
'There are some times when we can take a relatively low intervention approach, if I can call it that. There are others where we need substantive street redesign from building line to building line. We have to do that respectfully to the heritage of the city. We've inherited some of the most spectacular street designs in Europe and we can't ignore that.'
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Meagher added: 'Edinburgh is one of the easiest places to walk around as opposed to any other ways of getting around the city, but there's no doubt - I mean look at Princes Street, the pavements on Princes Street are in a shocking state.'
The council chiefs said a potential £50m a year generated by the visitor levy - a 5% charge on overnight stays capped at five nights from July 2026 - will fund essential improvements to pedestrian spaces including the neglected Princes Street.
'We now have the opportunity with the visitor levy before us,' Lawrence said, 'we are working to bring forward proposals via the new Visitor Levy Forum to elected members later in the year on the first tranche of visitor levy investment.
'Those issues of the quality of the public realm in the city centre, whether it's from a day to day point of view - so graffiti removal and so on - or more substantive works like the quality of Princes Street, we are working hard on those to bring them to members later in the year to be considered, only considered because there's a lot of claims on that money, to be considered as first priority.'
Meagher said: 'That £50m anticipated from the visitor levy has been spent many, many times over in people's imaginations. But I think it would be hard not to justify something to be done on Princes Street on things like improved lighting.
'We need to think long-term and have some sort of staged, strategic approach to the use of the visitor levy, rather than a whole random collection of one-off pieces of investment. We also need to see that over the years it's going to be spent in a strategic way.'
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Lawrence stressed his team of officers 'will be looking for a balance between the city centre and other parts of the city in the visitor levy proposals'.
He said: 'If we say it should all be spent on one square mile we know what the political reaction would be. What we are working on is basically everything we have heard from communities and elected members and others over the years to go 'what does a balanced package of investment look like so we can hopefully get political support for that later in the year?'. Public toilets are a good example.'
Addressing the soaring cost of performing at Edinburgh's world-famous festivals could also be aided by TVL money, he added.
'If you talk to folk in the festival communities, they do talk about affordability both for audiences and performers as a challenge. So we need to work with them to go 'what interventions can help with that affordability challenge'.
'People have said for 40 years it's incredibly expensive to put on a show in Edinburgh and all the rest of it. People still come, but there's lots of other cities catching up with us and we need to stay ahead of the pack. If affordability is a challenge to people coming here, then what interventions might address that in the right way?
'The conversation we want to have with the festival community, in particular, is not just whether it's expensive, but how that relates to the programmes they want to put on.
Jane Meagher has been City of Edinburgh Council's leader since December 2024 (Image: Gordon Terris) 'If you want more international performers to come for the Fringe or the International Festival then how do we create packages? So it's based on their development ambitions and their programme ideas, not just a kind of blanket approach.
'Affordability is clearly a challenge, but what are our shared ambitions and therefore what is the right intervention to make?
'That's why we're having those conversations which is why it's going to take time to bring forward proposals.
'Whether members want to spend the money on paving Princes Street or somewhere else, we will put forward a menu of choices later in the year.'
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