Visitor spend turns arrivals into local wages and local tax. Living Lab shows how much of it stays, where the rest leaves, and what a procurement or supplier change would retain.
One model of the spend and the supply chain it flows through: every sector the visitor pays into, the local and imported share of each, the events and routes that bring the spend, and the origin markets it comes from. Signal137 measures where visitor spend currently leaves the local economy, by industry and by market. Demand137 shows what a local procurement incentive, a supplier programme, or a licensing change would retain.
Where visitor spend leaves the local economy: by industry, by supplier, by origin market, on one reverse-Leontief model. Which sectors retain the most and which import the most. What each event and route brought in and how much of it stayed. GVA, tax, and jobs retained, net of leakage. Season over season, on one method, so retention is a measured trend.
What a local procurement incentive, a supplier development programme, or a licensing change would do to retention, before it is signed. Which sectors and suppliers to target for the largest gain. The effect on GVA, tax, and jobs, and on the businesses that would carry it. Alternatives compared on one number. Every figure marked observed, derived, or inferred.
| Product | Your question | You get | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signal137 | Where to target a local supply-chain or procurement intervention | A leakage rate by spend category: accommodation, food and drink, retail, transport | Support directed to the categories where retention is low and addressable |
| Signal137 | Does the proposed development strengthen or bypass the local economy? | Ownership structure, procurement pattern, and labour sourcing, modelled against comparable assets | Retained-value conditions attached to approval, incentive, or consent |
| Signal137 | How much leaves through booking and distribution channels? | The share of spend leaving through commission, payment processing, and platform fees | Channel leakage treated as addressable |
| Signal137 | How is leakage different from displacement or deadweight? | Measured separately: value that enters and leaves, demand that moves, activity that would have happened anyway | The three are never netted into a single adjustment |
| Signal137 | Can you measure leakage without a company's accounts? | Most category-level data is observable; ownership and procurement shares are modelled and stated as such | Modelled is never presented as observed |
| Signal137 | Does reducing leakage mean discouraging foreign investment? | No. The evidence targets weak, addressable linkage, such as procurement and workforce sourcing | Several externally owned operators retain more local value than domestic comparators, once examined |
| Signal137 | Which town paid for the event, and which town kept the value? | Retained value by place, with the leakage to the next city named | The Monza question answered before the next race |
| Demand137 | Which sectors should we grow so more of the value stays? | The sectors where retention gains are largest, ranked | Industrial policy and tourism policy point the same way |
| Demand137 | What is five points of retention worth, and where does it come from? | Retention modelled under sequencing, procurement, licensing, and sector-growth options | The size of the prize stated, and the levers that reach it |
| Both | Who holds this, and where? | Model, data, and a trained team inside your jurisdiction | The capability survives the change of official or consultant |
Retention rate by sector and spend category. The destination sees where the money goes after the visitor pays, not just what the visitor spends.
Leakage by sector: accommodation, food service, transport, retail, and entertainment. Ranking sectors by outflow shows where retention has the most headroom.
The incentive modelled against current sourcing patterns. Additional local wages, local tax, and local supplier revenue quantified against the cost of the programme.
Retention and leakage benchmarked on the same method. A destination that retains 60p in the pound sees whether that leads its peers and how much headroom remains.
Event-driven demand and baseline demand analysed separately. If leakage rises during events because temporary suppliers are imported, the intervention is different from one addressing year-round supply chain structure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
