Independent economic impact studies that help organizations prove the value of their work, sector, destination, event, or related efforts with evidence decision-makers trust.
Travel creates value in more ways than one: visitors in a destination, guests at a property, attendees at an event, passengers moving through an airport or cruise port, or travelers influenced by a platform or campaign. But that value is often spread across spending, jobs, supplier purchases, wages, and tax revenue.
To make the case in a boardroom, budget hearing, funding application, or policy conversation, you need more than a rough estimate. You need rigorous, independent economic analysis tailored to the specifics of your market and goals.
Tourism Economics builds independent economic impact studies that quantify what travel activity is worth: in visitor spending, business sales, jobs, wages, and tax revenue. Each engagement is calibrated to the geography, audience, industry, asset, or activity you need to measure, so the results reflect your actual economic context, not a generic template.
What you can do:
Every study starts with the specifics of your question: the geography, the activity, the audience, and the data available. We quantify visitor spending and employ an input-output model built to align with your geography to calculate employment, wage, tax, and industry data—all grounded in Oxford Economics’ rigorous economic modeling and Tourism Economics’ travel expertise. The result is a study calibrated to the structure of your focus, not a national average applied across the board.
As an independent, third-party research firm, our team responds to complex questions with credible answers that stakeholders can trust.
Win Funding and Public Support
Bring independent, credible evidence to budget hearings, ballot measures, local and global stakeholders, and policy discussions.
Justify Investment and Expansion
Quantify the return your focus area generates to support investment, expansion, or continued backing.
Benchmark and Communicate Value
Show stakeholders how an organization, campaign, platform, or industry contributes over time in terms they recognize: spending, jobs, wages, and tax revenue.
Tourism Economics conducts economic impact studies across the full breadth of travel and tourism: destinations and tourism boards, hotels and attractions, cruise lines and airports, technology and booking platforms, industry associations, and the governments and agencies that support them. Whatever role you play in travel, the model is built around your business. The common thread is not size or sector. It is the need to quantify travel’s value in a way stakeholders can trust.
Every economic impact study includes:
Plus, a detailed report, an executive summary built for non-technical audiences, and direct support from our consulting team to help present findings to your stakeholders.
An economic impact study quantifies the economic activity generated by travel, tourism, an event, or an organization within a defined geography. It measures direct impacts (visitor and operational spending), indirect effects (the ripple through local supply chains), and induced effects (spending from wages earned as a result), then translates those into jobs, wages, and tax revenue.
We do not apply a national average or an off-the-shelf multiplier to your region. Every study uses destination- or industry-specific data, including local spending patterns, wage data, and industry mix, calibrated within an economic model grounded in Oxford Economics’ methodology. The result reflects your community’s actual economic structure, not a generic estimate.
Clients use these studies to support funding applications and budget requests, make the case for a venue or event’s continued investment, inform ballot measures and public policy decisions, and communicate an industry’s or organization’s value to stakeholders, from boards to the general public.
Engagements begin with a scoping conversation to define the geography, industry, or asset in question, along with the data available. From there, our economists build and calibrate the model, and deliver a report with a presentation-ready executive summary. Timelines vary by scope; our team will outline a personalized schedule on a project-by-project basis.
Economic Impact Studies quantify the value generated by travel activity within a defined scope, such as a destination, event, organization, campaign, or industry. Policy & Funding Analysis applies economic evidence specifically to policy, tax, and funding questions. Project Feasibility looks forward, assessing the viability and likely impact of a proposed development before it exists. Many engagements combine elements of more than one service.
