How to increase an event's economic impact

Events create community pride and liveability, visitor loyalty and advocacy for a destination, and, importantly, deliver an economic boost for local businesses - and events do a great job of dispersing their economic impact across many kinds of businesses.

How could your region’s events deliver a bigger economic impact for your community?
And how could that impact be measured?

Event attendee research company IER gives practical advice on this, which we’ve summarised here.

HOW TO INCREASE AN EVENT’S ECONOMIC IMPACT

Event organisers have several strategies to work on to boost the economic impact of their event:

• attract more visitors who spend more and stay longer

• buy more from local suppliers

• increase income from outside the region (e.g grant funding and ticket sales to out-of-region visitors)

Event organisers should consider if their strategy is to chase more attendees or to chase yield i.e. work on attracting those who spend more and stay longer
(This might depend on where the event is in its lifecycle.)

Deliver an incredible event experience to drive word of mouth recommendations

When an event delivers a great experience, and a strong connection is created between the destination and the event, this creates attendee loyalty and advocacy which drives repeat visitation (i.e. attendees returning with friends!)

Your job is to create an amazing experience so your visitors will say great things about you - the most effective form of marketing is word of mouth recommendations.

Focus on visitor services and adding to your attendee experience.

Word of mouth and social media are the top ways people hear about events so advocacy by attendees and developing their loyalty is key!

An event has to get the basics right first: quality transport, accessibility, visitor services, cleanliness, food, facilities, wifi, signage and amenities - and then provide quality experiential elements: entertainment, innovation, unique food experiences, enhanced technology, etc.

It's the experiential elements that provide an emotional connection for visitors and drive recommendations.

Creating emotional experiences leads to loyalty which leads to advocacy, so create opportunities for visitors to feel connected to family/friends/locals, to feel entertained/excited/inspired/special and for escapism.

Create local advocates for your event because visitor connection with the local community is critical - visitors want to live like locals and feel connected! 

Create economic value

• Use unique elements from your region in your event to connect attendees with the community

• Understand your visitors and therefore what will value-add to their experience

• Communicate with attendees about what else they can do while they are in the region (to extend length of stay and expenditure) - keep it relevant to attendees (e.g. promote local family attractions if it is families that attend the event)

• Package the event with local attractions and retailers to increase expenditure

• Motivate locals to invite their friends and family to stay for the event
  

Work together in partnerships to build the event brand and the destination brand.

HOW TO MEASURE ECONOMIC IMPACT

The economic impact of an event only measures new money coming into the destination so it does not include spending by locals.  

Measuring economic impact helps with…

• grant applications and acquittals

• securing sponsorship

• benchmarking the event to compare with other years

• increasing the profile of the event which helps attract media attention

• community pride and community partnerships

• partnerships with local businesses
   

Events should measure…

• Visitor origins (where visiting attendees live)

• Their primary purpose for visiting the region (was it the event or another reason?)

• Length of stay

• Expenditure locally

• Attendance: total number of attendees and total attendances (1 person attending for 2 days or attending 2 events within the program = 2 attendances)

• Event organiser income and expenditure (and out-of-region income and local expenditure)
   

How to gather data

This depends on the size of the budget. Event organisers can

• Survey attendees, including when they sell tickets (e.g. entering residence postcode is required)

• Ask retailers in town to provide information e.g. on increased sales

• Engage a consultant/expert
   

The top mistakes events make when gathering data

• using attendances instead of the number of individual attendees

• guesstimating attendance poorly

• not asking if the event was the reason the attendee visited the region

What to ask in your attendee survey

• Attendee origin (postcode and state of residence)

• Was the event their primary purpose for visiting the region? (if not, did they extend their stay to attend the event?)

• Length of stay (daytripper, or overnight – how many nights)

• Expenditure (on each of these: food, tickets, transport, retail, accommodation, souvenirs, attractions, incidentals). Asking for specifics will help identify opportunities and possible partnerships.

• The number of total attendances and total attendees (E.g. one attendee could attend the event on two days = a total of two attendances)

  See IER’s suggestions on how to frame these questions in the attendee survey.

 
How to estimate attendance

• If you have a ticketed event or a main entry where you can use a counter to count attendees, your attendance count will be accurate.

• If you have a free event with no entry points, or multiple venues, you may need to estimate attendance.
  Many event committees and emergency services and media overestimate attendance significantly (often by a factor of 10!)

How to be more accurate 

• Density counts (number of people counted in e.g. 20 m2 x total event site m2)

• Product consumption method (how many of x products (e.g. cokes) were sold and asking in survey if attendees had bought x product/s)

• Counts from aerial photos

• Give wristbands to every attendee – green for local, blue for intrastate, red for interstate – how many given out = attendance

• For multiple-day free events, ask in the survey how many days individuals attended
  
  

Other income and expenditure to measure

• Competitor, exhibitor, media, entertainer and participant expenditure - ask about this in a survey for participants

• Event organiser expenditure (e.g. infrastructure, advertising, merchandise)

• Event organiser income (e.g. sponsorship, grants, ticket sales, merchandise sales)
  
  

Set KPIs

Setting a goal helps you plan to achieve it. SMART goals are measurable and achievable. For example, don’t set a goal to ‘Increase visitors’ but set a measurable goal, such as ‘Increase visitors by 5% from 1,000 to 1,050’.

Examples of measures of success for events include

• Number of intrastate and interstate visitors

• Total number of visitor nights (or total numbers of overnight visitors, or average length of stay)

• Total direct expenditure by visitors

• Total expenditure by overnight visitors

• Economic output (inputs:outputs) i.e. how much event organisers spent vs how much visitors spent (as a ratio)

HELP YOUR REGION’S EVENTS INCREASE THEIR ECONOMIC IMPACT

In our 7-week event management training (which starts on 24 July), we teach event organisers how to increase their events’ economic impact.

LEARN MORE IN OUR PODCAST

Talking data collection at events with IER

In this episode we talk to Glenn from event attendee research company IER about the importance of data collection for regional events.

A key message from Glenn is that whilst events need to find out how they can attract more visitors to their event, just as important is how they can encourage them to spend more at the event.

With tips and insights galore, this episode will leave you excited about data collection and what it can help you achieve for your next event.