Edinburgh Hotels Boosted By Festival
Edinburgh hotels always look forward to August with the arrival of the Edinburgh Festival. The majority of the cities hotels are fully booked for months before the festival starts, however there are fears this might not be the case for the next few years.
It is estimated that for every pound of public funding, the Edinburgh Festival pumps back £61 back into the Scottish economy.
Half of the festivals £18 million budget comes from public bodies and with the recent announcement by Edinburgh Council of 12% budget cuts across all departments there is a growing fear about how the festival will manage these changes.
There is no doubt the festival will survive in one form or another but the question is how will it look next year. The government will have to make very difficult decisions across the broad and if you imagine the choice between hiring more teachers for school children or putting more shows on at pleasance theatre I think we all know what there choice will be.
It has also just been announced by the council they plan to cut up to 300 management and backroom jobs over the next year. The council hope the plan will save up to £16 million over the next three years.
There is even plans to implement a bed tax on Edinburgh Hotels, however this is just in the first stages of talks and is unlikely to be passed.
The picture however is not all doom and gloom for the hotel trade in Edinburgh. Travelodge has just spent £7.9 million on its 11th hotel in the city. It is the fifth hotel the chain has opened in the capital in the last 15 months.
Travelodge CEO Guy Parsons said,
“Growth in Edinburgh has been one of our priorities as it is such an important tourism economy”. “We have committed around £50 million to new hotels in the city over the past three years, acquiring existing hotels that had fallen below the standards that the modern day consumer expects.”
Travelodge obviously believe there will still be growth within Edinburgh’s hotel trade over the next few years, but there is no doubt it will be hard for all sectors of the city’s economy over the coming months and years.
