Finding the right city strategy for marketing tourism - Iain Whyte
The long running debate over how the council should be involved in promoting business tourism in Edinburgh will come to a decision point next week. And there is an important lesson for the many ideologically driven councillors in the City Chambers.
The former Marketing Edinburgh used to run a convention bureau to encourage meetings and conferences to take place in the city. This benefits all sorts of businesses from small meeting venues, through hotels to the larger spaces like the EICC and the Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston.
Our universities also benefit, bringing in much needed cash and through the intellectual collaborations these meetings bring.
This “business tourism” is a huge part of our local economy supporting good jobs at the higher end of the hospitality industry and allowing participants to build skills and knowledge that can set them up for careers her or worldwide.
Edinburgh benefits because 80 per cent of people coming for a business meeting extend their stay, adding an average of three leisure nights. These are relatively well-off tourists spending in local businesses and the combined journey helps the council’s environment-related targets.
It was a folly when the work done by Marketing Edinburgh was ditched in 2020 because the left wingers hated tourist businesses, suggesting they only brought problems and low paid jobs.
The Convention Bureau was meant to be brought “in-house” by the council, but the experienced staff saw better opportunities elsewhere and the budget wasn’t there.
The hiatus was filled by the EICC, which took on the work under a guardianship that started to build up the bookings again and ensured that partners had a say, so the benefits were widely spread.
But this was scuppered again by the council because they wouldn’t stump up the short-term funds to allow the EICC to rebuild the match funding from businesses.
Fast forward to next week and councillors are being asked to pay £400k a year so that another new set of officers can try to get business funding on board again.
That’s three times what the EICC were asking for and will dwarf what Marketing Edinburgh used in taxpayer funds because they already had business support.
The lesson is don’t mess with what works. It can be very expensive for us taxpayers and hugely damaging to the city. But I fear that, for some, “in-house” ideology trumps any practical implications regardless of the cost to others.