Washington. Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) launches its new Event Impact Calculator today with an overwhelming adoption from the industry and a significant new data partner that reinforces its accuracy. At launch, 67 destination marketing organizations (DMOs) had subscribed, outpacing projections for the year.
“We have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this Calculator,” said Barbara Kirklighter, Senior Director, Research & Revenue Strategy for LA INC. The Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. “With the aid of this terrific tool, we are now able to report key metrics to our stakeholders such as visitor spend on lodging, transportation, retail, recreation and food & beverage as well as the number of jobs specifically generated from the meetings and convention business we help bring to our city.”
Developed by Tourism Economics (an Oxford Economics company) specifically for DMAI, the Calculator provides DMOs with a dynamic and credible industry standard to quantify an event’s full economic value in terms of direct expenditures, taxes, employment, wages and total return on investment.
“Return on investment metrics are crucial to understanding and communicating the value of particular events and continuing to form a broad case for destination marketing,” commented Michael D. Gehrisch, President & CEO of DMAI. “Armed with this information, DMOs and their communities can better articulate and understand the substantial impacts events have on the economic development of their destinations.”
As the Calculator makes its live debut, DMAI announced the addition of convention center data from SMG as a new ninth data source.
“By including actual contract data in the model, the calculations of event impacts are incredibly robust,” noted Adam Sacks, Founder and Managing Director of Tourism Economics, Inc. “The combination of SMG’s primary data with multiple survey, industry and government data sources provides a sustainable and credible foundation for impact analysis at the local level.”
