Why demonising Edinburgh's holiday let industry as 'parasites' is so wrong – Anna Calder Urquhart Morris
Edinburgh is fast becoming the most expensive city in Europe for tourist accommodation
Having spent nearly two decades running holiday rentals across Scotland and more than 30 years in hospitality, my team and I have borne quiet witness to human life in motion. We have opened our doors to families marking milestones, academics on sabbatical, artists seeking creative inspiration near Edinburgh Castle, and visitors passing through at the hardest, quietest moments of their lives.
Despite each of their different stories, our guests share a universal wish – a private space to call home, if only for a week. That is the essence of self-catering.
Yet somehow, language has shaped this warm tradition into something to be ashamed of. Overnight, our industry was reframed through loaded terms: Ghost hotels. Illegal hotels. Parasites.
This language did not emerge organically from concerned local communities. It was a deliberate, semantic framing, designed to incite moral judgment before a single fact was examined. Once you accept someone else’s language, you stop thinking for yourself.
Women’s key role in self-catering
Housing costs were rising, communities were changing, and political leaders needed a visible scapegoat. Small, independent operators were an easy target. A simplified answer was slapped onto a housing crisis that was never ours to solve. And the most frustrating casualty of this narrative is who it has actually harmed.
More than 70 per cent of Scotland’s self-catering sector is run by women, and research shows that women make over 82 per cent of travel booking decisions. My own background in health psychology has taught me that true hospitality relies on emotional intelligence and the ability to create connection and care. That human touch, cultivated largely by female entrepreneurs, property managers, and cleaners, was casually discarded in the rush for a quick political win.
The consequences of this framing are now staring us in the face with Edinburgh fast becoming the most expensive city in Europe for tourist accommodation. Draining the market of flexible, local rentals hasn't solved the housing crisis, it has simply made our capital unaffordable for those who benefit from it most: festival performers, families, and budget-conscious travellers, while fuelling an unregulated black market.
Keep our world-famous welcome
With the new visitor levy having just been implemented in Edinburgh, the burden on small businesses is reaching a breaking point. Dedicated operators are now closing their doors for good, broken-hearted. They aren't leaving because the evidence condemned them, but because a political story did.
Policy may have been implemented with good intentions, but good leadership requires acknowledging when a policy is failing. If Scotland wants to preserve the warmth and breadth of its world-famous welcome, our leaders must act before the personal, irreplaceable Scotland we love is lost to a narrative that was never really about protecting it.
The solution is clear: review the planning framework and grant grandfather rights to legitimate self-caterers who operated responsibly before these legislative changes. In practice, this means establishing a legal exemption that protects established businesses, allowing pre-existing operators to continue running without being retroactively penalised by new planning restrictions.
Let us keep doing what we do best: welcoming the world to Scotland.
Anna Calder Urquhart Morris is managing director of the Edinburgh Address & Adore Scotland
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