Edinburgh Festival Fringe: 'Affordable' performer accommodation almost a fifth empty days before festival
The accommodation is being offered as a partnership between the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and Queen Margaret University
Almost a fifth of rooms in “affordable” accommodation provided by the Fringe Society are still available for performers with just days to go to the festival’s launch.
The single rooms in halls of residence at Queen Margaret University’s (QMU) Fringe Village have been made available to artists taking part in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which starts later this week.
Around 80 rooms, rented at a cost of £294 a week - a total of £1,176 a month - are still believed to be available for booking. This is out of a total of 500 rooms at the site made available through the partnership between the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society and QMU.
The Fringe Society has now opened up bookings to a wider group, including visiting media, in a bid to fill the available accommodation, which is located on QMU’s campus on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The move comes amid an ongoing fear the soaring cost of accommodation in Edinburgh is pricing out performers from attending the Fringe and other festivals.
An email sent out by Fringe staff on Monday said rooms were still available at the campus.
The correspondence said: “Queen Margaret University is providing affordable accommodation to artists throughout the festival period. Due to room availability, this offer has now been opened up to accredited industry and media professionals.
“We have single, en-suite rooms available, which are located within three, four and five-bedroom flats, with each having a communal kitchen and living space. Each single room is available for a four-week period.”
One Fringe performer said he had been put off staying at the QMU Fringe Village due to the requirement to book the entire month. An increasing number of artists are cutting short their Fringe runs and opting not to take the full month of the Fringe in a bid to cut costs.
“I’m only doing a two-week run this year, so it didn’t make sense for me to book an extra two weeks of accommodation I didn’t need,” the performer said. “I ended up paying a similar amount for two weeks in the city centre, but it felt like a better option.”
The single en-suite rooms are located within an apartment. Each room is equipped with a single bed and a private en-suite shower pod, as well as access to a shared kitchen/diner.
A six-minute train is available from the campus near Musselburgh to shuttle performers into Waverley Station in the city centre. There are also Fringe-specific events held on campus, including a welcome reception for performers and complementary networking breakfasts during the month.
A “perfect storm” of the Edinburgh festivals combined with three nights of Oasis gigs at Murrayfield Stadium in early August have seen some hotel and self catering prices in the capital soar by hundreds of pounds a night.
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