In an attempt to identify the key indicators of the economic performance of special events and then to develop measures for these indicators that will facilitate comparison between events, an assessment of 105 event evaluation reports from around Australia was undertaken. Whilst the analysis of this extensive range of reports provided some general trends as to patronage and visitor expenditure profiles, the fact that there was minimal consistency between reports in terms of the type of
data that were collected and how data were analysed, reduced greatly the benefits that could be derived from this analysis.
This paper proposes a draft template to enable the comparison of special event economic performance data. Further, in order to operationalise the draft template, it is recommended that feedback on this template be sought from all state and territory tourism organisations (STOs). This paper discusses the processes for adopting this
template.