Edinburgh's festivals can be better but we should not make them smaller – Donald Anderson

It is perhaps hard to remember that Edinburgh could be a dull and uninspiring place in the mid-1990s.

Edinburgh's winter festival is being reviewed (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

The city was a pale imitation of Glasgow as a shopping destination, and the Edinburgh area has lost nearly 20 per cent of its retail spend to ‘the west’. There were lots of empty shops on Princes Street and there were no Christmas lights or activities in the city centre.

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay was a fantastic addition, but that only helped to bring visitors to the city for a few days.

It was then that Edinburgh set its sights on becoming a genuine Christmas destination and wooed a German market from Frankfurk, began a series of Christmas activities, and planned new lights for Princes Street and around the city.

Entrepreneur Karen Koran also stepped up and delivered one of the first Christmas ice rinks anywhere, something which has become a great Edinburgh tradition.

I am not sure that I fully appreciated just how successful Edinburgh’s Christmas had become until I was stepping down from the city council and attended the last meeting of the Edinburgh Guest House Association on a cold November afternoon.

One guest house proprietor was bemoaning the fact that they had overbooked and were unable to find a bed anywhere in Edinburgh for their unfortunate guest. The city was full at the end of November – the first time that this had happened.

Since then, the city’s accommodation providers have been pretty much full from the end of November through to early January. Edinburgh has been able to rely on the ‘twin peaks’ of high visitor numbers and high levels of business and jobs that have been the envy of Europe.

Our Winter Festivals are being reviewed. I am all for looking afresh at what the city has to offer and looking objectively at who benefits from the Winter Festivals, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Edinburgh’s Festivals can be better, but let’s not make them smaller.

Donald Anderson is the director of Playfair Scotland and was previously the leader of the City of Edinburgh Council

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.