Smash and grab?

Martin Foreman correctly identifies the underlying problem at the root of Edinburgh’s mass-tourism crisis (Letters, 27 December). An over-reliance on ever-increasing quantity is undermining the quality of the visitor experience. The effects on home-based trade and business can also be detrimental. An explosion of midrange hotel building and the uncontrolled rise of portfolio investor short term letting, for example, has had a serious impact on a traditional B&B trade which largely kept profits within the city.

The linear investment model of non-local corporate investors is a reductive process which, while it may provide a number of low-paid jobs with no real prospect of career advancement for bedmakers and serving staff, does not provide a reliable basis for a robust local economy.

It might be helpful if, rather than repeated soundbites from self-interested lobbyists, an objective and forensic costbenefit analysis of tourismrelated business practice in Edinburgh could be computed by an impartial and authoritative economic body.

Foreign Direct Investment has its benefits, but it is no panacea when it reduces a resident population to the status of useful flunkies. This is simply a form of smash-and-grab economics based on opportunistic exploitation. What happens when the current growth cycle comes to an end, as it obviously will? At least after the Dutch tulip bubble burst in 1637 its victims had a few nice flowers to look at. In Edinburgh, we are more likely to end up with a half-wrecked city.

DAVID J BLACK St Giles Street, Edinburgh