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isitBritain has valued the
V direct economic return of its Business Events Growth Programme at £ 35 for every £ 1 invested: £ 60.6m over the six years to March 2024. Despite this, the programme is now closed. Business events have lost their ring-fenced funding, and the dedicated team has gone from nine people to two. A UK parliamentary committee called the cut counter-productive. Meanwhile, Business Events Tasmania reports A $ 38 in visitor spending for every A $ 1 invested through its attraction fund. The state government has renewed that fund at A $ 900,000 a year, down from A $ 1.9m, which the bureau estimates could mean around 14,000 fewer delegates a year.
Both organisations reported what events earned for the destination, and neither budget survived intact. A return figure, however strong, does not tell a
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government what those events did for the goals it has set.
Destinations are not funded on activity. They are funded on outcomes.
At jwc, we built the Destination Development Model( DDM) on that premise. It scores a destination’ s event portfolio against its own policy priorities, across 15 dimensions from talent and innovation to community legacy, and highlights where events already serve those priorities and where they fall short.
Organisers and venues have a direct stake. The formats that make money, exhibitions and corporate events above all, are often the ones that move a policy goal forward, because they put talent and capital in the same hall across several sectors. Organisers also hold much of the data: format, programme and attendee profile are among the parameters the model scores.
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“ The report sets each cluster’ s policy targets against its event impact score, shows target, score and gap on every dimension, and ranks the gaps with recommendations. That puts a number where most destinations have only anecdotes” |
The destinations choosing to invest Some governments are moving the other way. Ottawa is reducing Destination Canada’ s base budget by C $ 3.2m a year while adding C $ 15m over three years to its International Convention Attraction Fund. New Zealand added NZ $ 1m for 2026 / 27 to keep its conference pipeline intact. Both report economic results and also look at the legacy business events leave behind.
Singapore puts that ambition on record. In April the government announced a S $ 740m injection into its Tourism Development Fund over five years, including S $ 5m for the Business Events in Singapore grant, against a target of S $ 4.5bn in MICE tourism receipts by 2040.
Ong Huey Hong, assistant chief executive, Industry Development Group at the Singapore Tourism Board( STB), says Singapore’ s ambition“ goes beyond tripling our MICE tourism receipts by 2040. We want to ensure that growth is underpinned by lasting value for our destination, industries and communities, and the DDM gives
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46 Issue 5 2026 |
www. exhibitionworld. co. uk |