Edinburgh festivals: Why do so few Scots come to the party?

At an Edinburgh Festivals Debate yesterday, VisitScotland’s chairman, Mike Cantlay, conceded there were “terrible” numbers of Scots who had never been to a single show at the arts extravaganza.

He said a concerted drive to capture more of the “staycation” market was planned for the next Year of Homecoming in 2014.

Jonathan Mills, director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and William Burdett-Coutts, artistic director of long-running Fringe producers Assembly Theatre, were among those arguing for stronger and more consistent marketing campaigns from bodies like VisitScotland.

Leading venue operators and promoters have admitted sales were down during the early part of this year’s Fringe, with many Scots shunning shows to stay in and watch the Olympics.

Yesterday, Cantlay admitted that less than £1 million was ploughed into the festivals by VisitScotland, around half of which goes on programming via the agency EventScotland. This compares with the £7m promotional campaign to coincide with the release of Disney-Pixar film Brave.

Cantlay said: “The festivals are the easiest thing in the world to sell and they have done extremely well in the last five years during these times of austerity.

“But how can it be that there are so many Scots who have never been to the festivals? It is terrible and it needs to be tackled.

“We need to work a lot harder to target Scots who think for one reason or another that the festivals in Edinburgh are not for them.”

Burdett-Coutts said: “A lot of the festivals are very good at doing their own thing in promoting their events around the world, but there is not a consistent or coherent message being sent out. The real difficulty is trying to reach people who have never been to Edinburgh before for the festivals and explaining to them what goes on.”