Retail focus has to be on rising number of visitors

Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Already plans to also have shops on the first floor have been changed by several hotels to surprise, surprise – more hotel space. What confuses me is that on one hand Edinburgh is expecting to have more and more visitors in the coming years, but there is still a general pessimism about retail, which seems to assume all these extra people are not going to buy anything.

Advertisement Advertisement Certainly visitors’ habits have changed and they don’t look to go to a nice restaurant the way they used to, but generally I have found that whether it be families or couples or those on their own here on business, they are always looking for something interesting to buy. There was much chatter in the shop last Saturday after the media had spotted that the now empty Jobcentre Plus space was to be filled with a bowling alley and a golf course with the upper floor, which in the old days of the space being occupied by New Look was connected, to be filled with arcade machines replacing the current vaccination centre. The company involved, King Pins, is part of a much bigger entertainment and leisure group and the King Pins brand is their family-oriented venture into what generally is a more adult night out.



With two successful venues in Manchester already in place you would hope they have the balance right. From the centre’s viewpoint the majority of the space is completely dead retail space so I can see the logic behind the owners’ thinking, but with similar places already nearby it will be interesting to see what the demand is. From my viewpoint I’m more excited to hear that slowly but surely the plans for the Waverley Market roof are going ahead, with the pub on the roof to reopen under new management in the coming months, and the rest of the roof soon to become part of a planning application.

So long as the plan isn’t for more pubs as before, it will be good to see the space being used and to finally have the “secret stairs” that house the Taylor Swift x Butcher Billy exhibition open as the entrance from the roof to the centre they are meant to be. Advertisement Advertisement Only this week it was in the news that several popular websites have started making it more difficult and expensive to return goods, especially clothing. All logic points to visiting a shop when that is possible rather than hoping for the best when buying online.

As I’ve said before if vinyl can make a comeback so successfully it should not be a surprise if retail, at least in certain sectors, shows steady improvement. Unfortunately I think that though people are now being encouraged to work less from home, that side of things will never recover from a retail viewpoint, and in a city like Edinburgh the focus therefore has to be on the rising number of visitors..