The Global Destination Report Just Confirmed What We’ve Been Measuring All Along
The evidence gap behind events’ sustainability claims
The Business of Events’ Global Destination Report 2026 paints a sector that has moved past pandemic recovery and into something harder: proving its value on terms beyond delegate counts and room nights (Davies Tanner / SFA Connect, 2026). Buried in the interview findings is a pattern that will be familiar to anyone working in event measurement – destinations believe deeply in the sustainability and legacy case for business events, but almost none can evidence it.
The report is candid about this. Sustainability is described as “the most visible part” of a widening value proposition, with destinations leaning on frameworks like GDS-Index and EarthCheck. Yet one European city representative admitted sustainability “is not yet usually the first thing clients ask for,” and only becomes persuasive “when concrete measures are presented.”
Legacy impact fares worse: interviewees across Europe, Canada and the UK say measuring knowledge-economy or innovation outcomes “takes time, research, and money” that funding models simply don’t prioritise.
The report’s own recommendation – fund “a small number of repeatable impact studies” tied to major events – is effectively a call for exactly the kind of measurement infrastructure event:decision already builds, with Impact: Event reviews.
Connectivity sharpens the point. Air access is now the most consistently cited competitiveness constraint, particularly for Tier-2 destinations, and the report links it directly to sustainability: destinations are starting to treat “access, price, and sustainability not as separate issues, but as linked parts of competitiveness.” Since flights typically dominate an event’s footprint, this is the tension our clients are increasingly navigating in real time – chasing international delegates for economic value while facing growing scrutiny on the emissions that travel represents.
There’s also a resourcing story underneath this. 58% of destinations say their teams are too small, and funding cuts hit sustainability programming, market intelligence and legacy design first – the specialist capabilities hardest to build in-house and easiest to lose when budgets tighten. We’ve just witnessed this very thing within Visit Britain. That’s a structural argument for bringing in dedicated carbon and impact measurement rather than expecting it to emerge from stretched internal teams.
One caveat worth carrying into any conversation: the report finds economic ROI still dominates as the argument that moves governments, while sustainability and legacy are viewed as “less compelling” at the policy level, even as destinations themselves increasingly believe in them. In practice, that means credible sustainability data currently does more work with organisers and clients than with policymakers – useful context for how we frame the numbers we deliver. This was framed well at The Business of Events Policy Forum in July-26 by the MP Martin Rhodes. Yes, shout about big numbers, but more value comes from the story.
Source: The Business of Events, Global Destination Report 2026, produced by Davies Tanner, researched by SFA Connect.
