Eye-watering accommodation prices during the Edinburgh Fringe have long been a challenge for performers and audiences alike – but this year, a new faction has entered the fight for affordable lodgings: Oasis fans.
The Britpop band’s hotly anticipated reunion gigs at Murrayfield Stadium will draw more than 200,000 people to the Scottish capital this weekend – clashing directly with the opening days of the world’s largest performing arts festival. The result? A city-wide scramble for beds, with prices soaring to unprecedented levels.
Comedian Marc Burrows has dubbed it “the Oasis effect”, saying it has made the already expensive Fringe “catastrophically” unaffordable. Hotel rooms have been listed for up to £4,000 a night, with hostels charging hundreds for bunk beds. Several guests told The Independent their bookings appeared to have cost three times the usual price.
“I started looking as soon as I got the tickets – and there were places in Edinburgh city centre costing £700 a night,” Oasis fan Emily, who lives in Newcastle, tells The Independent. “We’re all in our late twenties. That’s far, far out of our budget.”
She eventually found a room for four people at a two-star hotel in Uphall costing £300. It will take a walk, a tram and a train to get to Murrayfield Stadium, where Oasis are playing, but she considers herself one of the lucky ones.
“That was the only one I could find that wasn’t going to cost half of our mortgage,” she says. “I’m just glad that we managed to get one, because some people I know booked a hotel and it was cancelled, and they tried to get them to rebook it for triple what they originally paid.”
She continues: “My partner’s friend booked a hotel for £90, and the booking was cancelled and then the room resold for £400.”
The Independent found prices approaching £4,000 for accommodation. With 92 per cent of hotels and lodgings sold out on sites including Booking.com, Expedia listed one 12-bedroom house at £8,009 – the cost falling by almost half a month later. Meanwhile, one luxury hotel was charging £3,599 for a suite, with more affordable options no longer available.
Various chains have seen price increases of 74 per cent, with standard rooms listed at £343 for Oasis dates, and £197 the month after.
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One quadruple room in a hostel, with four bunk beds and a shared bathroom, was listed at £880 for two people, while two pods in a 10-bed female dormitory were priced at £311 each. Two beds in an 18-bed mixed bedroom with a shared external bathroom (and triple bunk beds) cost £224 for two people. Other publications have found prices as high as £7,000.
This has led to customers describing the companies online as “robbing bastards”.
Property management company Pass the Keys shared data with The Independent that showed that accommodation prices on the dates of the Oasis gigs were 31 per cent higher on average than on the same dates last year, with properties of up to three bedrooms costing £253, up from £192 in 2024.
Axel Mercier, a 33-year-old journalist flying in from Belgium, has travelled across Europe for concerts and says he has never seen anything like it.
“I’m really shocked by how hoteliers and Airbnb hosts are using dynamic pricing,” he says. “The prices are completely outrageous and there doesn’t seem to be any limit to what can be charged – even for small and run-down places.”
Like Emily, Axel started looking early – but the prices kept getting higher.
“Some places in the city centre were offering nights at £600 for a single night in a four-star hotel,” he says. “Even basic three-star hotels, usually considered a budget option, were charging up to £500 per night for two people. The worst I saw was a dormitory room in a hostel, with 30 beds priced at £180 for one night.”
Axel eventually pooled with friends to find accommodation in an Airbnb in Morningside, 30 minutes away from the arena on public transport. It cost £1,085 for two nights and four people. He said that outside of the Oasis dates, the cost is halved. “If someone wants to book it later in August on a weekend, it’s £250 per night. For us, it’s almost £550 per night.”
Artists aren’t faring much better. Amy Albright, 29, is a newcomer to the Fringe and has been forced to sleep in her car. She’s taken annual leave from her office job to attend, and is having to take showers at friends’ houses while using the 24-hour toilet in the car park she is sleeping in.
She tells The Independent that the rise in accommodation prices is “exploitative”.
“Everyone is talking about it,” she says, about the clash between Oasis and the Fringe. “Everyone was really annoyed, because it makes it more expensive for the performers.”
The costs have a knock-on effect on visitors, too. “Almost everyone I’ve spoken to has sold fewer tickets at this point than they had at the same time last year,” Albright says. “I’ve seen it in some of the shows I’ve been to. I’d say, on average, there is lower attendance this year.”
The Independent has contacted Edinburgh Fringe and Airbnb for comment.
Even locals like Gary, who planned to see Oasis with his daughter, say they have been “priced out”. His plight was made worse when he learnt that in the rush to purchase tickets, he’d been left with a restricted view of the stage, despite having spent over £1,000 on the experience in total.
“We are having to stay in Livingston because the hotels are absolutely priced out of our budget,” he says. “With the concert and Edinburgh Fringe at the same time, the prices for the city centre and surrounding areas are ridiculous and well over £500 for one night.”
The council says all precautions have been taken, and that price rises are normal when demand is high.
“Market rates affect tourist accommodation during August, as they do Edinburgh’s property prices and rents all year round. This is not new or unusual,” a spokesperson for Edinburgh City Council told The Independent.
“Central areas will tend to have higher accommodation prices, but with Edinburgh being such a small capital city, it’s incredibly well connected, for example by public transport. There are varied accommodation options in our amazing communities which are well worth exploring. While the council has no direct influence over market rates, we are pleased to see new hotels open all the time, which is expanding the options Edinburgh has to offer.”
Pass the Keys COO Wesley Brown says general hikes are related to changes in holiday let regulations in the city, which were implemented in October 2023. “They have done nothing more than raise prices for visitors, potentially damaging the tourism economy that brings millions of pounds in revenue to businesses across the city every August.”
But Xela, who runs Fringe University (an organisation helping students explore the festival), and has been visiting for over 30 years, says: “I’ve seen lots of students who can’t come. I see a lot of artists who really have stopped coming, or are debating it, or coming for shorter periods.”
She provides low-cost accommodation for visitors, charging £60 a night for performers. However, she says even that is too much for many artists: “The rooms are empty, and so it just kind of ruins the finances of the collective to have these nights empty.”
