Although hotel reservations and meals play a role in the prediction, there are many more steps.
If you host it, they will come.
Visitors head to downtown Indianapolis for the Big Ten Football Championship game on Saturday. And when visitors come to town, so do their wallets.
From Thursday to Sunday, the game is expected to bring in $20 million this weekend. Although hotel reservations and meals play a role in the prediction, there are many more steps.
Chris Gahl with the non-profit organization Visit Indy is one of the people working to bring visitors and their money to Indianapolis.
“We’re looking to go out and be very aggressive in bidding to host major events,” Gahl said. “Our job is to support the 83,000 men and women who depend on tourism for a living.”
And when a major event is added to the calendar, Visit Indy uses a special calculator to predict how much revenue it will bring.
The proprietary calculator, developed by Rockport Analytics, is updated annually and considers over 100 variables.
There are three types of expenses: direct, indirect and induced.
“Direct would be someone sitting down and having dinner,” Gahl said. “Indirect would be the server serving that table, the chef preparing the food.”
Finally, the induced expenses would include the meat or vegetable supplier who supplies the restaurant.
Gahl said the math is usually between 5 and 10 percent of the estimate, more or less depending on last-minute RSVPs.
Last January, the calculator hit even closer for the college football national championship.
The estimate was $150 million, while the actual earnings were $156.6 million, a difference of about 4.3%.
While many factors play a role, Gahl said it comes down to heads and beds. In the past two years, this has also evolved, with Airbnbs and VRBO to the mixture.
“We’re monitoring that and we have a subscription to something called AirDNA. That tells us the short-term rental market,” Gahl said.
This weekend, he said, “the rosters light up.”
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