Measuring What Matters: ORDA as the Benchmark for Destination Success
The Overnight Room Demand Analyzer (ORDA), highlighted in a recent webinar, helps destinations capture the full impact of conventions by measuring stays both inside and outside contracted blocks. Through the leveraging of attendee data, event parameters and room pickup, ORDA validates economic impact, guides marketing, supports incentives and informs stakeholder conversations.
For decades, destination organizations and meeting planners faced the same frustrating question: How many rooms are really used when a convention comes to town? Traditionally, in the past destinations relied on contracted hotel room blocks to measure event impact. Yet this method ignored the many attendees booking outside the block—through online travel sites, alternative accommodations such as Airbnb and the like, or non-contracted hotels. The result was an incomplete picture of a convention’s true economic impact.
The origins of ORDA go back to a landmark 2015 study, which found that one in every three rooms tied to an event is booked outside the official room block. That meant destinations were consistently underestimating the actual number of rooms utilized and, by extension, the economic value of events. ORDA, the Overnight Room Demand Analyzer, was created to solve this problem.
ORDA provides destinations with a modern, data-driven approach aimed at evaluating overnight room demand, ensuring that destinations have a full and accurate view of how events impact their communities. Destinations through ORDA have been able to pull together several key data points to assess the full economic impact including attendee ZIP codes, event parameters (such as facility and hotel locations), and contracted room details. With these inputs, the tool calculates the true overnight demand for any given event, including both inside and outside-the-block bookings.
Instead of relying on educated estimates, ORDA delivers a comprehensive analysis that highlights not just how many attendees stayed overnight, but also where they came from and how far they traveled. Destinations can access clear, digestible reports that estimate peak room demand, total room nights, and the percentage of rooms booked outside the contracted block (sometimes more than 70% for large conventions) as mentioned in the webinar. Within ORDA destinations are empowered to validate housing pickup numbers with hard data, accurately measure actualized attendance and its impact on hotel demand, and highlight the geographical reach demonstrating how many attendees traveled 50, 100, or even 150 miles for a singular event. By offering this deeper analysis, ORDA gives planners, hoteliers, and local stakeholders confidence in the numbers they’re using to assess performance.
Practical Use Cases
ORDA’s applications extend across the meetings and events ecosystem:
- Convention Services: Destinations can use ORDA data to validate services provided and better allocate resources.
- Financial Incentives: Cities often provide subsidies or incentives to attract large-scale events. ORDA ensures these investments are backed by reliable demand data.
- Marketing and Sales: By mapping attendee origins, organizations can refine marketing strategies and build stronger business cases for future bids.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Beyond hotels and venues, ORDA provides useful insights for local officials, economic development agencies, and even grant funders who want proof of an event’s broader impact.
The Future of Destination Measurement
In an era where transparency and accountability are more important than ever, ORDA equips destinations with a tool that reflects the full picture of event-driven demand. No longer limited to the narrow lens of contracted room blocks, organizations can now tell a more compelling story about their value to local economies.
Interested to Learn More?
Interested in learning more about ORDA including more practical use cases? We invite you to check out the most recent webinar here. The webinar takes a deep dive into the tool that is reshaping the way our industry understands and analyzes the actual room demand associated with events hosted in your destination.
Stephanie is the Advocacy & Data Coordinator at Destinations International. She contributes her thought leadership to blogs aligned with DI’s seven key content themes and supports the Advocacy & Research team on data collection and benchmarking projects. She holds a master’s degree in Global Tourism and Sustainable Economic Development from Johnson & Wales University and authored a Tourism Research Proposal on promoting sustainability to consumers. Passionate about tourism development, she is committed to helping destinations innovate for the future. In her free time, Stephanie enjoys reading, practicing yoga, and taking nature walks to stay grounded and inspired in her work.