Telling Edinburgh’s story: Mercat Tours on 40 years of showcasing the capital’s history

But, as Edinburgh’s Mercat Tours celebrates its 40th anniversary throughout the course of 2025, managing director Kat Brogan - daughter of co-founder Des Brogan - insists that one thing remains unchanged.

“Fundamentaly, it’s still about one storyteller sharing a cracking tale with a group of strangers from all over the world,” she asserts.

Those walks and tours showcasing the capital, its history and some of its darkest secrets, have been wooing thousands of visitors each year since the business was founded in 1985 by a small group of history teachers.

Mercat Tours has grown under the leadership of Des and now Kat, who took the reins some ten years ago, into what is arguably the city’s best-known, family-owned tour operator. Today, the firm has a payroll of just under 60 people, runs scores of tours daily - taking in, among other things, the Old Town’s underground vaults, ghost trails, witch trials and whisky tastings - and champions a number of ethical business practices, including being a real living wage employer - still a rarity in the tourism sector.

“Walking tours are totally unregulated,” observes Brogan, who says the business turned over in the region of £1.3 million last year. “Even being a limited business appears to be optional in our sector,” she adds. “I changed and upgraded all the contracts for our team to ensure everybody had employee benefits and solid secure contracts. We have been a living wage employer ten years now and a living hours employer as of last year. We have invested in a holiday home for the team and income protection and a raft of team benefits.”

Brogan had been in the business for eight years prior to taking over the MD’s role a decade ago, and stresses that the family structure is the “root and branch of what we are”.

Those family bonds were put to the test in 2007 when Kat’s mum, Win Brogan, passed away. She had been working in the tour business for about six years having taken early retirement as headteacher at an Edinburgh high school.

“It was an aftershock that rippled through the company for a good couple of years,” recalls Brogan. “We all looked after each other through that period. The team really held us close and looked after us which was amazing. Dad retired ten years ago and I took over. It was a very careful, planned handover that took about a year and a half.”

The business was hit by a further shockwave in 2020 when the outbreak of Covid-19 led to the shutdown of the hospitality and tourism sectors overnight with restrictions and constantly changing rules in place for months to try to control the spread of the virus.

It was a highly uncertain and worrying period during which “everything felt like it was in freefall”, says Brogan. The entire team of around 80 was furloughed and when life began returning to something resembling normality, a decision was made to emerge leaner.

Over-tourism concerns and a need to embrace the rapidly-changing digital world were further drivers of change at Mercat, in the post-pandemic world.

“The views of locals are valid,” says Brogan. “Their experiences are real and they need to be listened to, respected and acknowledged. So as part of that I decided to reduce all of our team groups by 40 per cent in order to trade more lightly on the Royal Mile.

“We now have smaller groups using headphones and live microphones to make sure that there is as little disruption as possible for our local residents and ultimately provide a better quality experience for visitors and our teams. We all want to preserve Edinburgh for the amazing city that it is.

“When we came out of Covid we also went cashless like many businesses did,” she adds. “That’s been transformative in terms of the security for the business and the security of our teams. We have also invested this year in more technology to give a really immersive, multi-sensory experience.”

Playlists

In addition to utilising the headphones and live mics, there are now playlists which have sounds of Edinburgh woven in, including appropriate music, sound effects or the spoken word. Those unique playlists are emailed to visitors post-tour so that at any time they can be “transported back to the heart of Edinburgh”, notes Brogan. There have also been “scent enhancements” added to Blair Street’s underground vaults.

“Digital is here to stay and AI is thundering on but I would argue that what Mercat is doing now is essentially the same as what we did in 1985,” declares Brogan. “We’ve moved on with all sorts of bells and whistles but it’s still about that story teller connecting with the visitors in front of them and with the city that they are standing in. We wouldn’t do recorded stuff because we are live story tellers.”

Achieving its 40th anniversary is viewed as a significant milestone by the close-knit business, which has become interwoven with the fabric of Edinburgh’s Old Town over those decades.

“Dad and I dusted off our badges at the start of the year and we did a tour that included a history of Mercat and the greatest hits of the Royal Mile - a two-generation Brogan double-hander for selected guests,” beams Brogan.

“We will have more surprises before the end of this year and next year it’s about doing even more with our community.”