Talking to the public about Air BnB and short term holiday lets
Sunshine on Leith: talking to the public
Over the weekend of 17 / 18th June 2023, twelve thousand members of the public made their way to Leith Links to attend the two concerts performed by the Proclaimers, in a huge tent on the Links. This was a big deal! For Leith, and for the Proclaimers, apparently, who are celebrating their 40th Anniversary this year.
Craig and Charlie commented: “We’re honoured to be playing Leith Links for the first time and hope the fans and local residents will enjoy the occasion.”
The promoters of the concerts, Regular Music, acting on the wishes of the Proclaimers, were kind enough to offer a ‘community tent’ inside the ticket holders’ enclosure to local community organisations, so that they could engage with the people attending the concert and share information about the local area and the local community, and, hopefully, also exchange views about topics of common interest.
In this tent were representatives of Leith Links Community Council, Leith Festival and Leith Athletic. Leaflets and other materials were also displayed from organisations that are part of the Leith Network of charities, in this case, All Together, Edinburgh North East Food Bank, and Hibernian Charitable Foundation.
The sun shone on the events (well, until the last moment, on the Sunday, when it came down in buckets!!) and the general atmosphere on the Links was fantastic.
Leith Links Community Council had produced some ‘Sunshine on Leith’ stickers which we handed out to people as they came in, and these provided a great ice-breaker and made a great way to say ‘Welcome to Leith Links’ and also to get into conversation with people. The stickers became popular and soon people were seeking us out to get one, as they had seen others wearing them. Even the concert crews were asking for them!
Everyone was in a good mood and we had lovely conversations with people not just from Leith and Edinburgh, but from all over Scotland, the UK and indeed from abroad. So many Proclaimers fans said that they or their parents had connections with Leith, and so they especially wanted to come to THIS particular concert. Many had apparently arranged family holidays and get-togethers around this very special event.
We had debated about what conversational topic / issue might be of relevance to people coming from all over, while also linking with Leith and Edinburgh. In the end, we went with the topic of Short Term Holiday Lets (AirBnB) because this is an issue that affects so many people, so widely, in cities and villages all over the world. It turned out that we were right – LOTS of people wanted to talk about this topic! Many people felt very strongly indeed about it (on all sides of the argument!), and we heard some rather hair-raising stories about people’s experiences.
On each of the two days, we set up a display board, with the question: What do people think about short term holiday lets in Leith and Edinburgh? Homes or Profit?
We asked people to place sticky dots to show their views on three basic questions.
Day 1 
Day 2
Rather than starting from scratch and asking some ‘same but different’ questions, we had decided to go with the same questions that the Scottish Green Party had been asking at the Leith Festival Gala Day the previous weekend, so that our results could be used to confirm/support – or challenge – the results that their exercise had produced. (The Community Council is non political and this was not an endorsement of the Scottish Greens as such, but a recognition of the universal relevance of this topic.) Here are the results:
| Questions | Yes | Mixed Feelings | No | |
| 1. | Do you think short term holiday lets have a negative impact in Leith / Edinburgh? | Day 1: 59 | 5 | 18 |
| Day 2: 84 | 2 | 8 | ||
| Total: 143 | Total: 7 | Total: 26 | ||
| 2. | Do you agree with regulation of short term holiday lets? | Day 1: 77 | 1 | 6 |
| Day 2: 92 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Total: 169 | Total: 2 | Total: 9 | ||
| 3. | Should short term holiday lets be allowed in Edinburgh tenements? | Day 1: 11 | 9 | 68 |
| Day 2: 11 | 3 | 80 | ||
| Total: 22 | Total: 12 | Total: 148 |
The first question should perhaps be discounted as it is very much a ‘leading question’ likely to result in skewed responses. (It did indeed provoke some very spirited arguments, and although there were many fewer dots placed in the ‘No’ section for this question, it could be said that those were some very strongly felt and strongly argued Nos)! Several people quite rightly pointed out that the question should really have read “Do you think short term holiday lets have a negative or a positive effect on Leith / Edinburgh?”
The second and third questions were much better and went straight to the heart of the matter, as in – what can our Council do about this? The council is being lobbied very hard by the industry, and pressurised to allow continued free rein to landlords and owners of short term let properties (well they would, wouldn’t they?). But by far the majority of our respondents were very clear indeed that they felt strict regulation was necessary, especially where properties were in shared spaces with ordinary permanent home owners / renters, citing loss of security, loss of community / neighbourliness, and loss of homes for ordinary families to live in (amongst other things) as major factors, so maybe our dots can help to show the Council that there is another lobby that wants its voice to be heard, as well as the voice of the landlords.
Many people were actually staying in short term lets over the weekend, and appreciated the benefit of this lower cost and flexible accommodation option. Many said that they ‘felt guilty’ in case they were upsetting local residents – but they had no way of knowing from the accommodation advertised whether this was likely to be the case. They felt that it should not be up to them as individuals, but that it should be the responsibility of a regulator, i.e. the Council in this case, to make that judgement and regulate accordingly. Some people pointed out that it was not all about short holiday lets – many people – eg. the teams working on the rigging of a concert like this, or the expert technical crews servicing the nearby film studios in the docks, need this type of lower cost accommodation option for work, on a slightly longer term basis (e.g. by the week or month), as hotels, guest houses and B&Bs were now out of their price range, due to tourism. They also agreed that appropriate regulation was the key.
We are the first to admit that this was not anything like rigorous, scientific research and cannot be taken as anything other than a sort of ‘snapshot’ of general impression of opinion. But the patterns that emerged were nonetheless quite convincing.
The total number of responses was 538, broken down by day as:
Day 1: 254
Day 2: 284
That’s a lot of people! No wonder we were quite tired from talking to everybody!