Your event's economic impact deserves better than averages.

What an economic impact assessment actually measures

An economic impact assessment quantifies the total financial contribution your event makes to a city or region. It goes well beyond venue revenue or ticket sales to capture everything that happens because the event takes place: hotel bookings, restaurant meals, stand construction, local hiring, supplier contracts, and the ripple effects through the regional economy.

This is fundamentally different from what city-level tourism statistics report. Venue-aggregate studies measure what convention centres and hotels invoice to organisers. That is one component of the picture, not the full one. An EIA captures the entire chain of spending that flows into the local economy.

That much is standard. Where studies diverge is in the details: what counts as direct spending, which multiplier turns direct into total, and whether the data comes from your event or from city-wide averages. Those choices can swing the headline number by 40 to 70 percent.

Why the methodology matters more than the headline

Economic impact numbers are used to justify public investment, negotiate venue contracts, secure city partnerships, and make the case for an event's presence in a region. The people reading them — city officials, politicians, tourism boards — are increasingly sophisticated. They have seen inflated headlines before. They will ask where the numbers come from.

The challenge is that not all economic impact studies are built the same way. Some use primary data collected directly from the event. Others rely on city-wide tourism survey averages distributed across many events. Others still use global industry multipliers derived from macro-economic models. Each approach serves a purpose, but they produce very different numbers for the same activity.

Consider the multipliers alone. An event-specific study might apply a blended multiplier of 1.4× to 1.5×, routing each spending category through its own sector-specific channel. A venue-aggregate study using regional tourism multipliers might apply 1.7× to 1.8×. A global industry report using macro-economic tourism multipliers might apply 2.4× to 2.5×. Same direct activity, same event, three materially different headlines.

The difference is not that one is wrong and one is right. The difference is in what each is designed to measure and who it is designed to convince. An event organiser presenting to a city council needs event-specific, auditable figures. A venue operator reporting aggregate regional contribution has a different brief. A trade association estimating the global industry's worth has yet another.

The question is: which approach matches what you need the number to do?

How we build an economic impact study

Every Equimore study is built from the ground up using primary data collected directly from the event. We do not start from city-wide averages and work backwards. We start from what actually happened and trace the spending forward.

Every figure in the final report traces back to a transaction or a survey response. The methodology uses an input-output model — the standard framework for economic impact analysis — but applies sector-specific multipliers per spending category rather than a single tourism multiplier across all activity. Hotels, food and beverage, construction, IT, security, transport: each category has its own multiplier reflecting how spending in that sector circulates through the regional economy.

The result is typically a more conservative blended multiplier than studies using generic tourism multipliers. We consider that a feature, not a limitation.

What we include and what we leave out

We measure economic impact on the host city or region. Spending that leaves the region is excluded. This makes the results conservative by design — and defensible under scrutiny.

Some of these exclusions are worth explaining. We exclude flights and rail travel because that spending does not land in the host economy. We exclude broad "business creation" — commercial deals attributed to exhibitors meeting at the event — because the causal link is methodologically loose and can dominate a headline without representing event-driven spending in the region. Some studies derive more than half their total from this category. We keep it minimal and clearly labelled.

We also discriminate between local and non-local attendees. A delegate who lives in the host city does not book a hotel. Applying an accommodation assumption across the full attendee base inflates the number. We use registration data to identify the local share and adjust accordingly.

What makes this different

The structural difference is data access. Most venue-level or aggregate studies work from venue invoices and tourism survey averages. They measure what the venue charges the organiser, not what the organiser actually spends in the region. They estimate visitor spending from tourism surveys covering all business travellers, not from surveys specific to the event.

We work from the organiser's actual financial accounts. That gives us the full cost base: not just the venue invoice, but staff, marketing, platform, content production, and the full supplier chain. When we say an event generates a given number in organiser spending, we can show the purchase orders.

We survey exhibitors at the specific event about their specific local spending — not what exhibitors at trade shows in general tend to spend. Sample sizes in the thousands give us confidence in the ratios. We apply those ratios to the full exhibitor population rather than extrapolating from a handful of interviews or generic estimates.

And we apply sector-specific multipliers. A euro spent on hotel accommodation circulates through the economy differently from a euro spent on stand construction or IT services. Routing spending through the correct sector channels produces a more accurate — and typically more conservative — result than applying a single tourism multiplier to all activity.

What you get

An Equimore economic impact assessment delivers a full report with headline figures, methodology documentation, and a complete audit trail. The study covers total economic impact, direct spending by category, tax revenues generated, and employment supported. Every assumption is documented. Every data source is identified.

The work typically involves three phases: data collection and survey design, modelling and analysis, and a final report with stakeholder-ready presentation materials. Timeline depends on event scale and data availability, but the core study takes eight to twelve weeks from data collection to delivery.

We also help with the conversations that follow. An economic impact number is a tool for negotiation, for partnership-building, for making the case that an event belongs in a city. We have spent a decade advising on those conversations, and the study is designed to support them — not just produce a headline.

Who this is for

Event organisers who need to demonstrate their event's contribution to a host city or region, whether for contract renewal, public funding, or partnership negotiations. Convention bureaus and venues looking to understand and communicate the value their facilities generate. Trade associations quantifying the contribution of their sector at a regional or national level.

If the number is going in front of someone who will ask where it comes from, it matters how it was built.