When is it time to say enough is enough?

Concerns about Edinburgh being ‘overwhelmed’ by tourists have to be better managed for the good of all

Complaints about Edinburgh being over-run by tourists may not be quite as old as the hills, but they certainly have a familiar ring to them.

While every other city in Scotland – and many around the world – would give their eye teeth for the kind of problem that generates £1.3 billion in visitor spending a year, supporting around 30,000 jobs, these complaints can not be simply brushed aside as the moaning of malcontents. There is no doubt though that the complaints are becoming a little louder and a little more urgent.

There is a genuine concern about the future of the Capital should the current visitor trend – which has seen the number of tourists coming to Edinburgh rise by half a million a year in just five years – continue. There is a doomsday scenario where the city centre becomes a soulless place; the last permanent residents driven out by late-night noise and the lack of any discernible community; more of a museum than a living city centre; somewhere that shuts down outside peak tourist times.

Is there a tipping point where the number of tourists overwhelm a city? And, if so, is Edinburgh anywhere near that point?

The capital is not alone in asking these questions. The same debate is echoing around Europe’s tourist hot spots, from Amsterdam to Venice, as cheap air travel and the rise of Airbnb fuels more foreign travel.

Edinburgh of course remains the gateway to Scotland for the vast majority of foreign visitors. More visitors to the city means more visitors to the Highlands and elsewhere, so the whole country has a stake in Edinburgh’s future.

The experience of Dubrovnik is instructive. In January, after concerns were raised by Unesco, drastic action was ordered. The number of visitors to its tiny Old Town was limited to 8,000 at any one time and surveillance cameras were installed to count people entering and leaving the fortified complex.

The proportion of visitors to residents in Dubrovnik is far greater than that in Edinburgh, where any issue that exists is restricted to the summer months in parts of the city centre. The answer is to be found not in turning off the tap of tourism income, but in smarter management of the industry to head off any potential crisis, including promoting other parts of Edinburgh to visitors rather than just the city centre, and cracking down on abuse of Airbnb lets.