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
Venue site selection. Living Lab connects transport and access data, existing venue utilisation, comparable-event patterns, and nearby accommodation capacity, geotagged around each shortlisted site, and turns them into a revenue and utilisation scenario for each site at its proposed scale. Reference data is published by the OECD.
Attributes what an opened venue actually did: the catchment it drew, the utilisation it reached, the demand it created against the demand it hosted. Whether the subsidy request that arrived in year three was foreseeable from the catchment. Signal137 is the account against the case that chose the site.
Tests the shortlist before the decision: which site the demand can reach, what scale and configuration each can sustain, whether the operating model is viable once built. The convention centre 30 minutes from the hotel cluster is seen for what it is before planning, not after. Demand137 ranks sites by reachable demand and access, not by capital cost alone.
| Product | Your question | You get | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demand137 | Which site to choose from a shortlist | Demand catchment, connectivity, and comparable-venue utilisation for each option | Sites ranked by modelled demand and access, not land cost alone |
| Demand137 | What scale and configuration can the site sustain? | Modelled utilisation across the likely event and business mix, including seasonality | Capacity sized to a sustainable operating model, not an aspirational one |
| Demand137 | Is the operating model viable once built? | Demand-linked revenue scenarios tested against realistic operating costs | The viability position, or the subsidy required, agreed before capital is committed |
| Demand137 | Can the delegates and spectators actually get there? | Catchment by realistic travel time and mode, not an administrative boundary | The site chosen where the market can reach it often enough to sustain it |
| Demand137 | Can this tell us a site is not viable? | Yes. If the catchment cannot sustain the scale, or connectivity is too weak for the event mix, that is the result | The favoured site is not the answer the model was built to give |
| Demand137 | Does the site depend on a transport link not yet built? | The dependency mapped and dated | Go or no-go conditioned on the link being secured first |
| Signal137 | What did the venue we opened actually draw? | Catchment and utilisation measured against the case | The next site decision starts from what the last one did |
| Signal137 | Is the venue creating demand or hosting it? | Gross attendance through counterfactual and displacement to attributable local value | The subsidy case rests on demand created, not on a full calendar |
| Both | Does this replace our planning or real-estate due diligence? | No. It answers the demand and viability question those processes do not | Land-use, planning, and cost due diligence run beside it |
| Both | How is commercially sensitive site information handled? | Under a confidentiality standard agreed in scope, particularly where the shortlist is not yet public | The shortlist stays private until you choose otherwise |
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.
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.
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 already there. A visitor added in the shoulder fills an empty room and is served by staff who would otherwise be idle. Almost no destination runs the calculation before fixing a date.
On 13 June 2026 Scotland played Haiti at Gillette Stadium. Around 50,000 Scottish supporters travelled. Boston’s bars sold beer at roughly four times the volume of a Fourth of July weekend, and some ran dry. Every signal that would have warned them was visible weeks ahead.
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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