The good news: the Balmoral Hotel, which sprouts grandly from Edinburgh Waverley station, has space for next weekend. But you must commit to a three-night minimum stay. In a Deluxe Castle View room that indulgence will cost you over £5,000.
The Balmoral is a magnificent hotel, but if you don’t have the resources of J K Rowling (who famously finished writing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in room 552), you might prefer a simple two-star budget hotel – such as the Ibis in the Old Town. Next Saturday night is all yours for £427.
Now, I have no problem with the travel industry responding to demand by raising prices. It is a sensible way to allocate scarce resources, whether hotel beds or seats on planes: next Friday, on a British Airways flight between London Heathrow and Edinburgh, some economy fares are touching £500 each way.
Hoteliers and airlines are responding to the intense demand to be in the Scottish capital for the Festival and Fringe, which drape themselves across almost all of August. Audiences, performers and the media bid up prices.
Heaven help the unwitting tourist who turns up unaware of the cultural frenzy that seizes the city each summer. In fact, divine intervention is not needed. But radical action is.
Read more: The best hotels in Edinburgh
The Edinburgh International Festival was a brilliant post-war concept. A Jewish refugee of the Nazi regime, Rudolf Bing, proposed a global celebration of human creativity. Since the first event in 1947, the festival has proved an extraordinary force – inspiring the counter-cultural Fringe, which has now become the most intense collection of performing arts on the planet.
A lifetime has elapsed since that debut. And tourism, like culture, has blossomed. In 1947, Edinburgh was doubtless as seductive as it is now. Some British tourists passed through on the way to the Highlands, but probably only a handful of international visitors visited.
Today, Edinburgh airport is in the premier league of UK hubs, alongside the London airports and Manchester. At least 25,000 passengers touch down every day in August, along with countless thousands of arrivals to the city by rail.
The Scottish capital simply does not need to host a festival in…
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