Living Lab’s first economic model was for the Singapore Grand Prix in 2012. In 2025 we became a software platform: government-grade intelligence for the visitor economy
Tourism development feasibility study. Living Lab connects the market report, transport study, planning constraints, and comparable set that a development team holds separately, around the site itself, and turns them into a scale and phasing range a design team can build to and a lender’s technical adviser can retrace to source. Reference data is published by the World Bank.
Attributes what a delivered phase or an opened property actually produced against the case that sized it: occupancy, rate, and absorption, with the driver named. Whether the strong season was the trend or the peak. Signal137 becomes the evidence for releasing the next phase, or for the investor who buys the asset once built.
Tests the scheme before design freeze: as-planned peak-year scale, sustained-demand scale, and phased release, each with the assumptions stated. Dependency on infrastructure not yet secured mapped and conditioned. Local capacity and pressure checked so the scale is one a planning committee can approve without special pleading. Demand137 gives the range, not the number the massing plan was built to hit.
| Product | Your question | You get | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demand137 | What scale can the site's demand genuinely sustain? | Demand vectorised across several cycles, not the single peak year used to size the massing plan | Unit count, room count, or footprint set against a tested range |
| Demand137 | Which phase first, and how fast to release the next? | A phased demand curve with the lead indicators that signal when a phase is ready | Phasing sequenced against demand as it arrives, not a fixed construction calendar |
| Demand137 | Does the scheme depend on infrastructure not yet secured? | The route, road, venue, or utility the demand case assumes, mapped and dated | Go or no-go, or phasing, conditioned on the dependency being secured first |
| Demand137 | Can local capacity absorb the scheme without stalling consent? | Labour, planning throughput, and existing visitor pressure in the catchment | A scale and phasing a planning committee can approve |
| Demand137 | What if the answer is a smaller or slower scheme than planned? | The range shows it, with the assumptions stated | A model built to always confirm the scheme is not evidence a lender should rely on |
| Signal137 | Did phase one absorb as the case said it would? | Occupancy, rate, and absorption against the forecast, with the driver attributed | Phase two released on evidence, not on the construction calendar |
| Signal137 | Was last season the trend, or the peak? | The strong season separated from the underlying demand, per property | The next phase is sized to the trend |
| Signal137 | What did the opening do to the surrounding market? | Displacement and new demand around the site, measured | The cannibalisation question answered before the next release |
| Both | Can this go into a planning application or a lender's technical report? | Every scenario states its assumptions, counterfactual, and uncertainty range | A planning officer or technical adviser can retrace it rather than take it on trust |
| Both | Do you need our scheme financials or land agreements? | No. Public and licensed market data plus the site, unit mix, and dependencies to be tested | Financial modelling built on the output stays with your own team |
A hotel, a resort, or a mixed-use scheme fails underwriting when a single route, a single annual event, or a single source market turns out to be carrying more of the demand case than the committee realised. The dependency is the risk, and it can be measured before signature.
A race track, an arena, a stadium: each is built for a peak it reaches a few dozen times a year. The gap between peak and off-peak operational need is the commercial challenge behind every sports-anchored development, and the reason mixed use is the answer rather than the fashion.
Manchester United’s proposed stadium is a Ā£2bn, 100,000-seat ground by Foster + Partners, with a target opening of 2030-31. The club and the regeneration case cite Ā£7.3bn a year for the economy and 92,000 jobs. Those are the promoters’ projections. Here is what to test before believing them.
The owners of the Bulls and the Blackhawks are putting a reported US$7bn into 55 acres around the United Center: housing, a music hall, a hotel, retail, a park. The arena already hosts more than 200 events a year. The question a developer should ask is what the other 165 nights are worth.
We turn messy event and tourism data into decisions that help communities grow. Bring curiosity and rigour. We will hand you questions nobody has answered yet.
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