About the Destination

Sacramento, California, has quickly become a leading festival destination on the West Coast. Home to popular events around hard rock, country, food, wine, and more, Sacramento’s festivals have become a critical driver of tourism in the city and surrounding region. Visit Sacramento is a key partner and promoter of these events, helping to bring vital visitor spending into the market to support local businesses and local employment.

Destination Profile 

Population size: 1.6 M in Sacramento County, CA

Destination Budget Size: 5-10 million USD.

Visit our website to learn more. 

Our Approach to Using the Event Impact Calculator

Sacramento, California attracts conventions, meetings, sports, events, and music festivals. Our approach in utilizing the Event Impact Calculator through the festival’s module is to display to our elected officials and stakeholders the impact of what three consecutive weekends of music festivals would have on our region’s economy. In our approach, we run multiple calculations for the various events that come into Sacramento while gathering relevant data including demographic information, ticket purchases, and zip code information as it pertains to a festival event. By running these calculations, we have shown key stakeholders in our community that the festivals can grow from two days to three days each year with an increase in capacity.

Additionally, our organization provides quantitative data to our elected officials and stakeholders to understand how these festivals would benefit not only the hotel community but also our local restaurants, bars, and retail stores. Our destination has two primary festivals; GoldenSky launched in 2022 and the Aftershock music festival which we have had for over a decade. These events are run by an event organizer, and Visit Sacramento serves as a key business partner. As the festivals have grown over the last few years, we have increasingly engaged our regional stakeholders to demonstrate the value of these events to the community. The buy-in from stakeholders and partnerships with event organizers have resulted in our destination becoming a leading West Coast hub for music festivals in the state. In addition, our destination produces local festivals including the farm-to-fork festival, and we help lend our support in key areas of other local events. 

EIC Output Goal  

Our goal with the calculator is to report to key stakeholders in our community and help educate them on why attracting festivals to our destination remains critical. In reporting to our officials, we share the direct business sales numbers, employment opportunities created, and tax revenue estimates. Following this, we present our findings to key stakeholders in our convention center and to media representatives. Regarding the output report, we find the data to be helpful in showing promoters who are considering coming into the market a potential return on their investment.  

Regarding advocacy, the report has proven useful in educating our city officials about the benefits of music festivals and their impact on the local community. We find this education to be critical, especially if it is a music festival that many locals do not attend. Real data from the calculator helps our team amplify the message of why elected officials should care about the music festivals and investments made by Visit Sacramento. Further, this data helps us make the argument for attracting more festivals and gaining support from additional sponsors. 

“Having real data that we can give to potential sponsors can be the difference maker in attracting more festivals to our destination.” (Visit Sacramento) 

Learning Experience

With the continued use of the calculator, our destination has learned that getting the right data in front of the stakeholders can make a substantial impact. The timely availability of data helps our organization educate our stakeholders and attract more events to our destination in the future. From our viewpoint, not everyone in our community understands the importance of room nights to the market and how that affects the economy. But when you can show a report outlining potential attendee, organizer, and exhibitor spending including its relation to sales tax, the picture becomes clearer. In addition, we have continued to improve our process by collecting updated zip code reports following each festival so we can run a report with the Over Night Room Demand Analyzer (ORDA) to assist with the calculation.

Moreover, the calculator has allowed us to quantify the moving parts of our events including both music and local festivals. In speaking with our key stakeholders, we have been able to advocate for festivals in our destination and educate them on the potential positive impact on the community. By using data to tell the story of economic impact holistically, we can encourage our destination to procure more festivals. 

How Can a Destination Organization Use the EIC to its Advantage?

Our advice for other destinations would be to understand the fields that are in the calculator and decipher how the different fields affect the output reports run in the calculator. We recommend asking for the data that you need from event organizers and utilizing ORDA to assist with the attendee zip code reports. We also suggest running the calculator on every lead you have and running multiple calculations including lead level, definite, and post-event, to see how the event evolves during the booking process. Additionally, we encourage destinations to understand the backend report fully and how the numbers come into play and how they affect things, as well as the importance of accuracy when entering information into the report.

Once your organization has a deeper understanding of the calculator, you can utilize it to articulate the full story of each event that comes to your destination. With the use of the calculator, you can demonstrate to stakeholders the impact that events have on local businesses, such as hotels, restaurants, and retail shops. Another recommendation would be to use the glossary of terms as outlined by both Destinations International and Tourism Economics and reach out to them with any questions you are unfamiliar with or need additional clarification. Lastly, it is important to get the relevant data that you need from the event organizer as it helps you get the percentages you need to break out the numbers, yielding a more accurate result.