Some oil service vessels in Aberdeen Photo by Bill Harrison via. It's a strange time to work in Aberdeen. Its status as the UK city with the highest average disposable income has diminished, with oil workers forced to turn to food banks as their jobs disappeared. Before that almost 50 percent oil price dip, off-shore workers β many of them equipped with relatively high wages and long stretches of involuntary celibacy β made up the bulk of the regular and high-paying clientele for sex workers operating in Aberdeen.
It made the Scottish city a popular pit-stop on the tours of escorts from the UK and beyond. But without that relative job security, Aberdeen-based sex workers have had to shorten their tours or opt for other cities in Scotland, from Edinburgh to Glasgow.
At that time, it was very busy and we did well," she says. I only stayed for two days, even though I had a whole week booked.
It's a sentiment that I hear echoed by other women who rely on the business of oil workers in Aberdeen. On saafe. On the 22nd of May, one poster wrote: "Lots of girls who used to go up there just don't now, it's just not worth it. It's not the money-making place it used to be," while another wrote: "I have heard that things aren't as good as they once were since the oil industry took a hit".
Other businesses in Aberdeen have felt the knock-on effects of falling oil prices. An August report from the Economist states that hotel occupancy was down 18 percent compared to the year before. By March , hotels had suffered a 43 percent revenue per room drop on Speaking to Alexander Kemp , professor of petroleum economics at Aberdeen University and director of the Aberdeen Centre for Research in Energy, Economics and Finance, it's clear that the low price of oil is starting to have a lasting impact on the trades that sex workers tend to rely on.
