There would appear to be little point in promoting specific events if social and environmental costs outweigh the economic benefits. In recognition of this, a number of tourism researchers have proposed and experimented with more all-encompassing (or holistic) approaches to event evaluation. A weakness of these approaches, however, is that most do not readily allow impacts over time and delays to be factored into the evaluation process. In this paper, 'system dynamics' is proposed as the basis for a solution to this problem. An additional benefit of the recommended approach is that the events evaluation model can readily be implemented as a decision support system.