Interview with Playbill chief executive Philip Birsch aboard the FringeShip which has arrived in Leith Docks
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Good morning Brian, I'm Philip Bursch, the Chief Executive Officer, owner of Playbill
00:06in New York and we are currently on the Friendship in Leith Harbour at the Ocean Terminal.
00:13Tell us about your original idea for the Friendship and bringing it to Edinburgh.
00:18Well the original idea was to bring a lovely cruise ship to Edinburgh to give people a
00:26place to stay and give them entertainment and good value for the pound and to help ease
00:32the crisis of all the housing that happens every August.
00:38And tell us about the response you've seen over the last year since you kind of released
00:44the places.
00:45Well you know it's interesting, the response has been excellent but the actual bookings
00:48are not as good as the response.
00:49Everyone loves the idea.
00:51We have about 400 people on the ship, we'd hoped to have more but we have 400 very happy
01:00people and it's a very lovely environment.
01:03I think for a first time through we learned a lot and we are very excited about the future.
01:09There's a lot of good outcomes that we're enjoying and I think we're going to be very
01:16excited to revisit this in the next year or so when we can do it again.
01:21So for people who are staying on the Friendship, just tell me a little bit about what's on
01:24offer to them.
01:25Well they get all their meals, every morning we have Fringe Entertainment at 10.30 before
01:31the shows open in the festival and at night we serenade them with entertainment or comedians
01:37at 10 o'clock, 10.30 so that they have shows at the beginning of the day, they have shows
01:42at the end of the day, we have swimming pools and gymnasiums and telephones that ring in
01:46the middle of things and we have a lot of good restaurants on board and so it's a really
01:54fun environment of people, like-minded people, who talk to each other and tell each other
02:00what they should see.
02:01It's really kind of, it's a fun environment.
02:04This is one of the main spaces you use at night time.
02:08This is the cavern, I didn't know caverns were on the sixth floor of things, but this
02:13is the cavern and this is where at night we're going to have the comedians and the
02:17other performers where people have their bar, their entertainment and a way to whisk them
02:23off to bed so that their day begins with entertainment in our Palladian Theater and their day ends
02:30up here watching the comedians or other excellent entertainment.
02:35We really like giving people a fully choreographed time on our ship.
02:43So you've been doing offers to release rooms to performers, people working at the festivals?
02:49Yes, we've offered that to people for a week if they wish to stay on the ship at a very
02:53low price for people who are working on the festival and can confirm that and we're also
02:59now opening up to the public and we welcome them and we hope they will consider staying
03:04with us if they need a place to stay and we would love to have them.
03:07And so people who are maybe thinking about coming to Edinburgh for the Fringe, but maybe
03:12worried about the cost of accommodation, you're saying this is an option for them?
03:16Absolutely, we'd love to have them, we're learning, we'd love to have more local people
03:21who wish to join us, we think we'll just make our ship better.
03:25Brilliant, and you were saying to me earlier you're quite keen to do this again?
03:31Well, we're learning a lot, I'd like to do it again.
03:34Ships like this you have to book many years in advance, so we'll take time to get another
03:40ship to here, like this one, we'll probably use them again, they're a lovely company.
03:45We'd want to come back in 26 or 27, we haven't apparently learned our lesson, we want to
03:50do it again.