CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
“Edinburgh will wake up and find out that no-one is taking care of its brand”
(21 posts)-
Posted 6 years ago #
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If your business is marketing a city and you achieve the pinnacle of having a conference about marketing European cities in your city then I guess the only way is down? Marketing Edinburgh has possibly peaked in total numbers of visitors tho more hotels and airbnbs are opening as I type.
One issue with marketing Edinburgh is that the strategy appears to be to increase visitors to the same finite number of attractions? They are good but likely to burst at the seams.
London being bigger has managed to spread the marketing love to places like Shoreditch and Hoxton. Formerly east end rough places now all hipster beards and jeans that stop just below the knee so you can wear Wegians without socks. (Norwegians being the name of the loafer type shoe with the tassels where Ingrew up).
Marketing Edinurgh and similar bodies have failed to do this to Granton for many decades.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Hipsters are all in Leith, despite the efforts of Marketing Edinburgh to cram all visitors into the castle and Royal Mile.
Posted 6 years ago # -
“One issue with marketing Edinburgh is that the strategy appears to be to increase visitors to the same finite number of attractions?”
Indeed
Although in addition to the physical/building attractions there is (for ever?) an expanding range of festivals.
There must be people (tourists) who wish there were fewer of them, so perhaps a version of marketing that doesn’t just look at delivering people to commercial interests?
There is of course the whole, never quite answered, question of how much visitors (and of course more and more of them) actually benefit ‘Edinburgh’ and its residents.
Countering with ‘you don’t want it to be like in the 60s, 70s, 80s’ etc misses several points.
Posted 6 years ago # -
12 years to sort climate change and Edinburgh is still encouraging tourists to fly here. Is none of this based in Leith because the expectation is that it will be under water? Have they really not moved beyond x is good, so 2x must be twice as good?
And yes, the festivals were better in the 80's. Less commercial, less expoitative and much more for locals (Cavalcade, free shows at Wireworks, Fringe in the Park etc)
Posted 6 years ago # -
There's an analogy with traffic control. More cars - let's build more provision for them. Ditto tourists. Rather than controlling the numbers and saying what is acceptable.
Cities should be walled with a hefty entrance fee. I was watching a tourist scrum outside Dubrovnik once, which is walled. It was like being outside a stadium for an international or a rock concert. If cities are going to be entertainment, treat them as such.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@mgj - Yes, it may be nostalgia for when the world was young but I do remember the old uncomfortable tacked together venues where for not very much you could see something clever and innovative. Far less slick than today.
Posted 6 years ago # -
“12 years to sort climate change and Edinburgh is still encouraging tourists to fly here.“
But that’s the real world.
More IS better.
OBVIOUSLY
Just keep things going ‘like they always have been’, ‘it’s the natural order’.
OBVIOUSLY
Alternatives are always ‘too difficult’.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Extinction Rebellion say only 11 years left. They are taking all school kids out on strike this Friday. Well not in Dinburgh as Dinburgh on holiday.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Hang on - we can literally tax tourists to stay in the city and it apparently won't put them off, but abolishing a marketing quango will be a disaster? Won't the vaunted marketing expertise of all the major investors in the city's hotels, attractions, festivals and venues fill any gap - or does that only work when the taxpayer foots the bill?
Posted 6 years ago # -
"Cities should be walled with a hefty entrance fee. "
Like in the Middle Ages then?
"does that only work when the taxpayer foots the bill?"
Indeed. If Edinburgh's tourism industry is doing so well it can presumably afford its own marketing effort?
"Far less slick than today."
Everything seems to be going that way these days: barber shops, tattoo artists, etc. all offering "experiences" with overly stylised shop design aesthetics presumably supposed to look good on Instagram...
Posted 6 years ago # -
I remember Instagram.
Or was it MySpace?
Or perhaps Friends Reunited?
Why do people go anywhere anyway when they could just experience it all on their ‘phones?
Posted 6 years ago # -
12 years?
“
The IPPR warns that the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes is rapidly closing.
...
"This century will be marked by rapid social and environmental change - that is certain. What is less clear is if societies can make wise political choices to avoid disaster in the future."
“
Posted 6 years ago # -
“
However, critics said the central location, in an already tourist-heavy part of the capital, risked overcrowding, and argued that any supposed transport benefits would be limited.
“
Posted 6 years ago # -
CHDot, XR are saying 11 years left on the wall of the canal bridge at boroughmuir. Obviously they are a bit of a headline grabbing unit ( not sure how tomorrow.'s school pupil strike will go)
Boris Johnson cannot remember why he loosened restrictions to allow £24m of TFL funding to go to an unbuilt garden bridge, dept for transport chipped in anothe r£19m and the charity raised £10m from donations. But no bridge was ever built. WTF DID THEY SPEND THE MoneY ON. Maybe they sent JK Rowling's PA to Molton Brown for soap?
Posted 6 years ago # -
XR are saying 11 years left on the wall of the canal bridge at boroughmuir.
I fully support their cause, but they had no right to vandalise a historic structure. Stone-built buildings & monuments are off-limits for graffiti. By all means put the message up on a modern structure.
Posted 6 years ago # -
@neddie, they usually use chalk paint that washes off, this seems to be stuck?
Posted 6 years ago # -
I suspect even chalk doesn't come off the porous surface of stonework very easily
Posted 6 years ago # -
-@neddie, ah yes, that sandstone is very porous. They will have to come back and change the digits each year. Memento Mori
Posted 6 years ago # -
I haven't seen the graffiti but based on my children's use of chalk on our decking the hasn't been the correct sort of weather this winter to wash it off vertical surfaces. A couple of day's driving rain would make a big difference.
Posted 6 years ago # -
From PoP experience, sticks of chalk wash away very easily, but the spray on stuff will still be visible many months after it is applied.
Posted 6 years ago #
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