Most destinations run near capacity for part of the year and well below it for the rest. A visitor added in the peak displaces one who was already coming. A visitor added in the shoulder creates net new value.
A visitor added in the peak displaces one who was already coming, and strains services that are already full. The hotel room they take was going to be sold anyway. The restaurant table was going to be occupied. The extra spend is mostly a transfer, not an addition.
A visitor added in the shoulder occupies a room that would otherwise be empty, is served by staff who would otherwise be idle, and leaks less, because the local supply chain has room to serve them without importing.
The same event, moved from August to May, can be worth more to the country. The event did not change. The system it landed in did.
For a candidate date, three things are needed: the demand the event would bring, by origin and stay; the capacity already committed on that date, across hotels, transport, and venues; and the displacement the event would cause among visitors who were coming anyway.
Run that for the peak date and the shoulder date, and the shoulder usually wins on retained value, even when the gross spend is lower. Less of it is displaced, and more of it stays.
The shoulder weeks with open capacity are usually worth more than the peak weeks that displace demand already there.
The date is usually set by the rights-holder, the venue, or habit. The economic case is produced afterwards, for the date already chosen. By then the question is not which date, but how to justify the one that was picked.
The calculation is small once the data is connected. It is only large when it is done from scratch, for one event, by a consultant with three months and a blank page.
One event moved is a decision. A calendar paced to absorptive capacity is a strategy. Place each event in the weeks where the calendar has room, so caterers, drivers, and airlift scale with the demand rather than being overwhelmed by it or importing to meet it.
Done across a year, the local supply chain is larger at the end of the cycle than at the start, and keeps more of every subsequent event.
The counter-seasonal argument is not a plea to spread visitors for its own sake. It is arithmetic. The same event delivers more retained value in the week the place has room for it, and a government can test which week that is before the contract is signed.
The argument is in one system, the size of the prize. The page for event portfolio optimisation sets out how the calendar is tested as a whole.
For further reading, see OECD Global Events Toolkit.
For the next event date on the table, ask for the retained value at that date and at one shoulder alternative, net of displacement. If nobody can produce both, the date is being chosen by habit.
A hotel pipeline decision is usually made on an occupancy trend, extrapolated forward. That answers a different question from the one a planner, a developer, or an investor faces: is the market short of rooms overall, or short of rooms on the 18 nights a year when demand peaks?
A new route photographs well on launch day. Whether it is still flying in year three, without deep discounting, and still worth the airport incentive that started it, is a quieter question, and it is the one that comes up at renewal.
International visitors to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025, the first annual decline since the pandemic, while worldwide travel grew. The spending did not disappear. It moved. Five economies are absorbing most of it, and the shift now looks structural.
Oman has announced plans for a high-altitude destination at Jabal al Akhdar, combining sports training, wellness, and tourism at 2,400 metres. It is the kind of project a Gulf government can commit to at once, and the kind that lives or dies on a demand case nobody has yet published.
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.
International arrivals to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025 while worldwide travel grew about 4%. Living Lab’s displacement model puts the forgone spending at roughly US$50bn, and about US$10.6bn of it within reach of five economies. Each is limited by a different constraint.
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