Accommodation
The cost of accommodation in Edinburgh has already hit the headlines for being considerably higher than in the past for performers as well as for festival-goers, which may have put people off going this year and may continue to do so in the future if something isn’t done about it. We only decided to splash out on a hotel at the last minute, even though we were charged the most we have ever paid for the most basic facilities we have ever been given.
We have stayed a few times at the Bruntsfield Hotel, a Best Western hotel but which has been taken over by WorldHotels since we were last there. In 2017, we paid less than £200 per night for an ‘executive double’, then in 2018 we paid almost the same rate for the same type of room but with breakfast thrown in. This year, we were charged nearly £250 per night for a basic room with no bath, no desk and no breakfast, plus there is now a charge of £10 per night to use the car park, which was previously free for residents. They even charge a rental fee if you want to borrow an umbrella. Check-in isn’t till 3PM, by which time I’d seen two shows and collected two press passes on the day I arrived.
This was just our experience, but many others have reported the same situation elsewhere in the city—some of the self-catering flats we looked at, which always used to be the cheaper option, cost as much or even more. The Fringe Society has recognised this as a problem and is clearly worried about it; its post-festival survey, sent to all participating media outlets every year, had a whole section at the end this time about accommodation costs, asking whether this is a barrier to us covering next year’s Fringe and whether sponsored or capped accommodation would help.