The Need:
Assembly Events runs Edinburgh Christmas markets and Hogmanay. These events are enjoyed by thousands from far and wide, but what is the impact on Edinburgh? How does it perform in terms of adding to the local economy and raising the profile of Edinburgh overall?
The MindField Thinking:
Christmas and New Year are high-energy events for people. We needed to understand their reflective and rational thoughts to truly understand the longer-term impacts. For the past 2-years, we have run a post-event attendee survey, using Assembly’s ticket purchasing database.
The Answer:
With around 1000 responses to each survey, we were able to provide some invaluable insight that demonstrates a positive impact and enables Assembly to plan even better future events.
Key insights:
- Hogmanay is a clear driver to visiting Edinburgh. Entertainment needs to stay fresh to ensure current visitors return year-on-year
- Word of mouth and social media are the event’s strongest channels, which makes people’s experience important
- We calculate that events brought £48.5m into the city of Edinburgh; the opportunity to increase this in future years lies in more targeted events for young pre-family and family-age attendees.