Thats interesting about the visits to Edinburgh castle, probably very accurate. Feels accurate too. Around 2009 or so Edinburgh was pretty "dead" I remember work mates complaining about it, so much one of them moved to Glasgow. Now we have the opposite problem.
I'm just making these numbers up because I don't have a good way to estimate them, could also be ">50%" instead of ">15%". But that's what it comes down to.
I think COVID really highlighted the contrast; first it was a slow increase that you don't really notice directly, then suddenly none, and then suddenly a huge spike again. e.g. Edinburgh roughly doubled the number of tourists from 2012 to 2019[1] which, in spite of being a fairly large change, you probably don't really notice when spread out over a 7 year period.
[1]: visits to Edinburgh castle is probably a reasonable proxy: https://www.statista.com/statistics/586822/edinburgh-castle-...