Overtourism is not the issue, it’s where they congregate – Kevin Buckle

There’s plenty of room, we just need to provide reasons for visitors to go further afield

Pixies T-shirts are flying off the shelves at Avalanche

Thursday saw the announcement of the vinyl that will be on sale on Record Store Day – when independent shops are given a massive bunch of exclusive releases. In this case, massive means 569 with even more “unofficial” releases that I thought wasn’t allowed but then again I’m very old skool with regards to Record Store Day.

It is the day that shops thank the labels and artists for all their support and artists and labels gush about how much they love record shops and everybody conveniently forgets that for the rest of the year the vast majority of those very same labels and artists spend their time trying to lure fans to buy directly and cut out the shops.

Luckily Avalanche has moved on from this scenario and Swans records sit comfortably in front of Tame Impala and The 1975 while we provide what sometimes feels like the world’s youngsters (given the number of international camp kids we get) with Pixies and Sonic Youth T-shirts.

Similarly customers who choose to support bands rather than shops will appear this April 18 and won’t reappear again until the next year. Thankfully even now Avalanche has many loyal customers and since we moved to Waverley Mall a growing number of new ones.

Clearly when buying their music people are entitled to do what they wish and few consider the wider implications but in other areas such an attitude causes serious problems and none more so than in the current attempts to control the effects of tourism – or more accurately overtourism.

What I’m not sure of, even with those heavily involved in dealing with the ever increasing visitor numbers, is that they are aware that at least for now there is plenty of room for everybody in the city centre, never mind in the city as a whole.

The problem is that most visitors congregate in a relatively small area and the question that should be posed is can they be persuaded to go further afield. With music the downside of fans changing buying habits was simply the closure of shops but the implications of overtourism are far more severe.

I really don’t think appealing to people’s better nature is an option. What is needed is to make people want to go further afield, even if that is still within the city centre and it was for that very reason that when I was asked about encouraging folk to use King’s Stables Road while very supportive of an arts centre when asked about an attraction I didn’t hesitate in suggesting Harry Potter.

If truth be told it is not that many Edinburgh councillors aren’t well intentioned but what they fail to understand is that most people don’t have their concerns or employ the same thought processes.

The current obsession with active travel certainly blinds councillors to other important matters but most of all assumes people have somewhere to travel to and while this may be true for those going to work and school when it comes to making the city easier to get around for visitors there needs to be new reasons for them to want to walk around the city.

What certainly doesn’t help is that even simple signs and maps are given the full consultation treatment and take years to appear. Whatever the answer let’s hope the council don’t use an invisibility cloak to hide the problems!