Edinburgh councillors’ hate-hate relationship with tourism threatens to derail the re-establishment of an essential conference marketing agency, reports Herald columnist John McLellan

Back in 2019 before anyone but virologists had heard of Covid, the powers that be in Edinburgh thought tourism was a problem to be restrained, a goose whose neck needed wringing because it had laid enough golden eggs.

The number of visitors would grow three per cent every year without doing anything, said council chief executive Andrew Kerr - now rewarded by his Labour Party pals with one of three new, clearly political non-executive directorships at the Scotland Office - as the plug was pulled on Marketing Edinburgh, the council’s arm’s length destination promotion bureau.

Hindsight being a great thing, the mistake was acknowledged in the ruins of the visitor economy as the pandemic unfolded, but then some of us had argued it was a stupid decision in the first place, when the city was in a competitive international market and only had a volume management issue during the August Festivals season.

I found myself in the odd situation of being an Edinburgh councillor arguing to maintain Edinburgh’s investment in tourism while helping to bring an international journalism conference to Glasgow, having been approached by the Glasgow Convention Bureau in my capacity as director of the Scottish news publishing trade association.

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But it gave me an insight into the different approaches to business tourism, where Glasgow bent over backwards........

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