More than 700 events Ā· 14m room nights Ā· US$12bn GVA Ā· 49 countries Ā· 180 cities Ā· in the past 12 months
- Our purpose
Visitor economy evidence: tourism decisions are made in silos. Living Lab changes that.
- Our purpose
Our Goal
Visitor economy evidence. To optimise the global visitor economy Reference data is published by the OECD.
The problem
Visitor economy evidence. Events are planned without knowing what competing events are on, or what hotel supply looks like. Airlines add routes with a near-perfect view of their own profitability and no view of national economic strategy. Marketing spend, short-term rental licensing, hotel approvals, and event dates all act on the same economy, in sequence, each one changing the return on the others. Reference data is published by the OECD.
Each team optimises for what it can see. No one sees the whole. This is not a failure of talent. The people running events, airports, hotels, and city agencies are capable and creative. It is a failure of tools.
What we do
Living Lab supplies the data, insight, foresight and actions that make a shared view possible and easy. Our operating system and machine learning connect the silos, so your talented people can make great decisions with the whole system in front of them.
The models rest on government-grade, UN SDG-aligned foundations. We run them in real time, on live calendars, in the field, not in journals and not a reports that gather dust in aĀ filing cabinet.
The average GVA uplift available to a mature visitor economy that plans nationally rather than in silos
Assumptions, confidence, and model runs stay visible to the client. A number you cannot trace is a number you cannot defend.
Delivered by those events
Our clients are governments, cities, airports, rights holders, and destination developers. They come to us when a number must survive scrutiny: a subsidy case, a hosting bid, a route business case, or a board paper. We do not sell a feasibility brochure, and we do not sell a spreadsheet. We supply a fitted model, the data, and a trained team, in-country.
Why the visitor economy is a significant lever
It is fast, and it multiplies. Against a volatile backdrop, the visitor economy responds quickly and largely on existing infrastructure. Visitors arrive and spend, and because it is labour-intensive, that spending becomes jobs almost as fast. A visitor’s spend at a hotel does not stop there: the hotel buys local produce, hires local staff, and pays local suppliers, so the ripple reaches sectors far beyond tourism, and international visitors bring foreign currency that helps balance trade.
It builds the place, and it lifts everyone. Visitor spending and levies attract the capital that funds the roads, airports, parks, and transit that residents use every day, and give the justification to protect the culture and landscape that drew the visitors in the first place. It offers a wider range of jobs than almost any sector, from first roles for young people to skilled and entrepreneurial ones, and lets a boutique, a cafƩ, or a craft market compete beside the largest operators. That is why it matters so much to growth and to social mobility.
Make insight meaningful: visitor economy evidence
A shared view is only worth having if it changes what gets decided. An insight that changes nothing is merely a report, and the sector has plenty of those.
Real economic impact should drive policy and investment. Not attendance. Not volume. Not vanity numbers.
Assumptions, confidence, and model runs stay visible to the client. A number you cannot trace is a number you cannot defend.
We work alongside clients in the field, not as a distant licence. We care about outcomes,.
The visitor economy is one of the most powerful levers we have for growth and for social mobility. I’m proud of what we do. It’s important.