Economic Impact Studies are often sought after by tourism and event managers who would need to demonstrate the value to sponsors, government agencies and other stakeholders.
Our view is that they should be seen in perspective with the social, community, touristic, recreational and other values. However it is also important to have a dollar-value to understand the economic contribution to the economy.
There are many systems used to estimate the economic contribution of events and tourism attractions to the local destination and economy, and many cases of misapplication and overestimation. Our preferred approach is to estimate the direct in-scope visitor expenditure. In simple terms it only assesses the spending of visitors to the area, who have travelled to the destination specifically for the event. Here are just some of the events that have gained funding using our approach
This approach is also used to assess sports events across the UK and is supported by many academic studies around the world. Accordingly, we try not to use multipliers in our analysis as these often misrepresent the true impact of the event on employment and on the extended economy.
For more detailed information about the economic impacts of sports events in the UK, here is a great article by Chris Gratton.
DESTINATION RESEARCH 