Ask a mayor, a tourism board, and a chamber of commerce what tourism is worth to the same city and you will get three numbers, each right on its own terms. Define the terms once and the city has one tourism contribution figure and one case for the investment that grows it.
The three numbers count visitor spend at the point of purchase, the sectors that depend on it and the jobs: three real views of the same economy. Stating the terms turns three views into one number.
Scope: which activity is in. Geography: the city, the region, the country. Period: the year, and the source year of each input. Basis: whether each line is observed, modelled, or inferred. Retention: how much of the gross figure stayed in the local economy, by segment. A statistics office can set a figure that carries those five beside its own and adopt it, and the treasury can then fund against it.
A footprint is total ongoing scale and an impact is the incremental change one decision caused, so report them separately.
The footprint is the total ongoing scale of the visitor economy, whatever produced it. The impact is the incremental change a specific decision caused, net of what would have happened anyway. Report them separately. The footprint shows the sector’s size and wins its seat at the table. The impact shows what one event, route or policy added and wins its funding.
The stronger version of a footprint follows the money through the supply chain rather than stopping at the point of first spend. The hotel pays the laundry, the laundry pays the energy company, and at each step some of the value stays local and some leaves through a national contract or an imported input. The segment-level view is what shows a government where the growth is: which sectors to build, which procurement rules to change, where a small shift in retention adds the most to the local economy.
Three numbers appear when nobody defines the terms, and defining them is the fastest gain a city can make. The method is on the pages for tourism economic footprint and supply-chain leakage. For further reading, see OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2024.
Before quoting any tourism contribution figure, check it carries the five terms above. State the terms and the treasury, the tourism board and the industry can all use the same figure.
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.
None of the three states what it includes, what period it covers, or whether the money stayed. A footprint figure is only useful when it carries its own definitions, and it is only defensible when it is kept separate from impact.
A major event is a rallying point for civic pride, and just as easily a rallying point for protest. The difference is usually whether residents can see what the event does for their street, in terms they recognise, before the road closures start.
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.
During the 2026 World Cup, host-city hotel rates rose 13% on average. Miami rose 30.3%. New York fell 4.5%. The average was true and useless: it would have told all 16 cities the same thing, and been wrong for most of them.
At the Italian Grand Prix, the fleet of guest vehicles arrives on German plates with German drivers. The hospitality guests do not sleep in Monza, which hosts the race. They sleep in Milan, which does not. The town that pays captures a fraction of what the event generates.
