25-05-2025
Meet the owners of Edinburgh's new female-owned visitor centre
Sarah Lachhab and Mathilde Marcoux have launched their centre, Source Edinburgh, to provide maps, guides and Scottish-made crafts to the city's tourists after the VisitScotland iCentre on the Royal Mile was shut down in February.
Speaking with the Sunday National, Lachhab explained why she and Marcoux decided to set up Source, the focus on selling artisan products made exclusively in Scotland and the biggest issues facing Edinburgh tourists – hint: it's not an excess of free public toilets.
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Lachhab, an established tour guide in Scotland, explained the origins of Source: 'Mathilde and I already run a business called Wee Ecosse, where we offer walking tours through Edinburgh in French.
'Our first business grew little by little, and we were in need of having a space to operate from. We started thinking that if we were going to lease somewhere, it'd be better if it was accessible to the public so we could create a new revenue stream to fund it by having a little ticket office and an artisan shop.
'As we were developing our ideas, we heard that, sadly, VisitScotland were closing down all of their iCentres. I'm a big believer in those places, so we thought that, as tour guides, it was a natural step for us to open one of our own.'
Sarah Lachhab said she was a 'big believer' in the iCentres and was sad to see them close down (Image: Gordon Terris) A former VisitScotland employee herself, Lachhab understood that tourists in the digital age are more likely to use their mobile phones for things visitor centres previously had an edge over. Source has welcomed over one thousand visitors since its opening in West Parliament Square, facing St Giles' Cathedral, last month; a humble figure compared to foot traffic on the Royal Mile, but she and Marcoux are both firm believers in slow tourism and slow business.
She said: 'Not a lot of people know about us, but we think it's so important to be able to provide services for tourists who need it most – like maps, for example, for someone whose phone doesn't have any data.
'We don't feel the need to grow super fast. We're a self-funded business and we want to be sustainable.'
Unlike many of the tourist-trap gift shops on the Royal Mile, Source focuses on procuring goods for their shop from strictly Scottish manufacturers – candles from Ayrshire, soaps from Angus, baskets from Stornoway, Edinburgh-made shortbread and tartan accessories made by independent kiltmakers.
A selection of the items sold inside Source's artisanal shop (Image: Gordon Terris)With only 18% of small businesses in the UK led primarily by women, Lachhab stressed the importance of Source and what the pair hope to bring to Edinburgh's tourism industry as the busy summer season approaches.
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She said: 'The biggest question we get asked is actually, 'where can I find a toilet?'. Edinburgh has a real lack of public toilets, so one of my biggest wishes for summer is that the council will add more that aren't in the Old Town so I can direct people to them.
'I also want our staff to be as trained to answer questions as genuinely as possible. I'm not a native English speaker, but we offer information in so many different languages – French, German, Korean, Spanish, Italian and, of course, English.
'We want to be accessible to as many people as possible and bringing diversity to the Mile is something we're really proud of. Maybe we are a little crazy trying to do business here, but we love it.'
