Economic Impact of Events: How Destinations Calculate What a Congress Brings to the City

When Destination Vancouver bid to host Web Summit in 2025, it did not lead with skyline photos. It presented an estimate: about 35,000 attendees and 57 million dollars in direct economic impact from a single event. The extra public funding was approved roughly two months later (Destinations International, case study, January 2025). The case illustrates how an impact estimate can inform a public funding decision.

The economic impact of an event is the new money it brings into a defined area, plus the further spending that money triggers. It is usually reported in three layers: direct, indirect and induced effects. Convention bureaus, destination marketing organisations (DMOs) and publicly owned venues use the figure to win bids, justify subsidies and report to their funders.

This guide explains how the calculation works, step by step, where the numbers come from and where they usually go wrong. A useful estimate makes its scope, data sources and assumptions explicit, so funders can assess what the figure does and does not show.

What economic impact measures, and what it does not

Start by asking which additional spending the congress brought into a clearly defined area.

That question defines the scope. Economic impact counts spending by visitors from outside the area, by the organiser and by exhibitors, insofar as it lands in the local economy. It then follows that money through local suppliers and wages. It is not the same as two related measures:

• Return on investment for exhibitors or organisers: whether an exhibitor’s stand paid off, or whether the event made a profit. That is a business case for one company, and our ROI framework for tourism trade shows covers it in detail.
• Legacy: the effects that money cannot express, such as new research collaborations, skills or a stronger local sector. Legacy matters, but it needs its own method and should not be squeezed into a euro figure.

Report these measures separately so readers can distinguish the local economic effect from a company’s return and the event’s longer-term legacy.

The scale of the business events sector shows why these figures are taken seriously.

The ratio between the last two figures is about 2.4 (our calculation from the published totals). That is a global output ratio across all sectors and countries, and it is not a multiplier you can borrow for one congress in one city. Keep that distinction clear when choosing a model for your destination.

Direct, indirect, induced: three layers of one effect

Impact studies commonly distinguish three layers to show the initial spending and the further activity it supports.

• Direct effect: the spending itself. Delegates pay for hotels, restaurants, taxis and shops; the organiser pays the venue, caterers and technicians; exhibitors pay stand builders and local staff.
• Indirect effect: the purchases of those businesses. The hotel buys laundry services, the caterer buys food from regional producers, the stand builder buys timber and transport.
• Induced effect: the spending of wages. Employees in all those businesses spend part of their extra income in the local economy, from groceries to rent.

The German trade fair industry offers a recent, well documented example of the split. A study by Prognos for AUMA, the association of the German trade fair industry, modelled an average trade fair year in the 2024/25 cycle. It combined surveys at 30 events in ten trade fair cities with an input-output model of 72 sectors.

The same study counts about 280,000 jobs, 187,000 of them direct, and 5.4 billion euros in tax revenue. Here the total is about 1.9 times the direct effect, clearly lower than the global ratio above. That is no contradiction. The narrower and more open the economy, the more money leaks out, and the smaller the multiplier.

For a local study, the model must account for purchases and income that leave the defined area.

How the calculation works, step by step

The layers explain what an impact figure contains. Document each stage of the calculation so others can understand how you reached the result.

Step 2 is where the organiser’s data matters most. A registration list with country, city and arrival dates tells you how many delegates are visitors at all. If those fields are missing, collect additional data or make the assumptions explicit.

Step 3 needs a short spending survey, sent during or shortly after the event. Ask about the whole trip, not per day, and separate what the delegate paid from what the employer or the organiser paid. Otherwise the same hotel night appears twice.

Step 4 is the step most often skipped. The research literature has named the usual suspects for decades (Crompton and McKay, Festival Management & Event Tourism, 1994). A resident’s lunch at the congress is money that would have been spent in the city anyway. A delegate who would have visited the city in spring and simply moved the trip is a time-switcher. A tourist who was in town anyway and bought a day ticket is a casual visitor. None of them brings new money.

Destinations International describes its Event Impact Calculator, built by Tourism Economics and used by more than 300 destination organisations, as the standard for measuring “net new money” coming to a community. Use that additionality test consistently throughout the calculation.

A worked example: one congress, two answers

Here is a fictional congress with 2,000 delegates over three days. The assumptions are labelled as such; your own data replaces them.

Illustrative calculation. Assumptions: 20 per cent of delegates are local, and a further 10 per cent of the visitors would have come anyway.

The larger result includes spending that is excluded from the adjusted calculation. Showing the local-attendee and other deductions separately makes the difference clear and lets readers assess the assumptions.

Where impact figures usually go wrong

The worked example shows two errors. In practice there are a few more, and they all push the result in the same direction: upwards.

• Counting everyone: local delegates, day visitors from the city and staff of local exhibitors add spending, but no new money.
• Borrowing a multiplier: a national or global ratio applied to one city overstates the effect, because cities leak more spending than countries.
• Reporting sales instead of income: total sales are the biggest number, but value added and wages say more about what residents actually gain. Crompton and McKay warn that the highest sales do not necessarily produce the highest income.
• Reading jobs too literally: a three-day congress rarely creates permanent jobs. Hotels and caterers cover peaks with overtime and temporary staff, so jobs figures are full-time equivalents on paper.
• Ignoring displacement: a large event can fill hotels at high prices and keep other visitors away. If that happens, the net effect is smaller than the gross one.
• Showing benefits without costs: an impact study is not a cost-benefit analysis. Public costs such as subsidies, security or transport need their own column.

Before publishing, check that the area, data sources and adjustments support the measure you have chosen to report.

Taxes are a good example of a figure that needs context. The Vienna Meeting Industry Report 2025 credits meetings and congresses with about 348 million euros in tax revenue across Austria. Only 39 million euros of that went to the City of Vienna itself (Vienna Tourist Board and Vienna Convention Bureau, April 2026). The German trade fair study shows the same pattern: municipalities receive about 13.5 per cent of the tax effect, and federal and state governments receive the rest. If your funder is the city, tell it which share of the taxes actually reaches the city budget.

Where the data comes from, and who should own it

The steps above depend on data that sits with three different parties. The destination organisation brings the model and the multipliers, the venue brings its own purchasing data, and the organiser brings the participants.

That last part is often the weakest link. The convention bureau that supported the bid needs origin data, length of stay and a usable survey sample. The organiser has all three in its registration system, but the data rarely arrives in a shape anyone can use. Agree the fields before registration opens: place of residence, arrival and departure dates, and consent to a short spending survey. Ambassador programmes, which win congresses through local academics, already report expected delegates and economic impact as core figures. Our guide to congress ambassador programmes shows how bureaus track them from the first conversation.

Funders may also want to know what business relationships or opportunities the event created. Measuring economic impact now ranks as the top priority of DMOs (Sojern, State of Destination Marketing 2026), as our explainer on destination marketing organisations describes. Funders increasingly ask what business the event created, in addition to how much was spent. For a trade show or a hosted buyer programme, that second layer is the number of qualified meetings and what came of them.

Converve supports destinations and organisers with participant and meeting data. Registration profiles and every scheduled one-to-one meeting sit in one dataset. You can show where participants came from next to who met whom and how many meetings took place. The spending model stays with your economists; the participant and meeting data comes from the event itself. See how destination teams work with it on our tourism solutions page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the economic impact of an event?

It is the new money an event brings into a defined area, plus the further spending this triggers. Studies report it in three layers: direct spending by visitors, organisers and exhibitors, indirect effects along local supply chains, and induced effects from the spending of additional wages.

How do you calculate the economic impact of a conference?

Define the area, count delegates from outside it, survey their spending per trip and add the organiser’s local spending. Subtract locals, time-switchers and casual visitors, then apply a regional multiplier. Report value added, jobs and taxes with your assumptions, not only total sales.

What is the difference between direct, indirect and induced impact?

Direct impact is the spending itself, such as hotel nights and venue hire. Indirect impact covers the purchases of the businesses that receive this money. Induced impact is the spending of extra wages earned in those businesses. In the German trade fair industry, the split was 15.9, 10.1 and 3.9 billion euros (AUMA and Prognos, 2026).

What multiplier should a city use for event impact?

One from a regional input-output model for your own area, usually provided by a statistics office, a research institute or a tool such as the Event Impact Calculator. Regional multipliers are smaller than national ones, because more spending leaves the area. Never borrow a global ratio, such as the 2.4 implied by the Events Industry Council figures for 2025.

Is economic impact the same as return on investment?

No. Economic impact measures what an event brings to a city or region. Return on investment measures whether the event paid off for a single party, such as an exhibitor, a sponsor or the organiser. A congress can have a high economic impact for the city and still lose money for its organiser.

Make the estimate useful for funding decisions

An economic impact study is a tool for decisions about bids, subsidies and venue budgets. Make the study’s geographic scope, additional spending and calculation method clear. Count only new money, subtract what would have happened anyway, use a regional multiplier and publish your assumptions. State the remaining uncertainties so readers can interpret the estimate appropriately.

The organiser holds much of the evidence: who came from where, how long they stayed and what business they did. If you want participant and meeting data that your convention bureau can actually use, get in touch with Converve.