The South African Festivals Economic Impact Calculator (SAFEIC) is a free online tool developed by the South African Cultural Observatory (SACO) specifically for cultural festivals and events. SAFEIC can be used to estimate the economic impact of a festival on a host economy.
Tourism events attract “new” money into the impact region and create direct and indirect impacts through re-spending of the initial financial injection. Economic impact studies attempt to answer the question, “If the event had not taken place, what would the loss of economic activity to the impact area have been?” An economic impact study thus calculates all the additional economic activity that takes place in the region as a result of the event or festival.
To run SAFEIC, a minimum of five pieces of information are needed. Ideally, some of this information should come from a visitor survey, but if a survey is not possible, SAFEIC uses default values derived from reliable sources, such as the South African Domestic Tourism Survey.
Minimum Data Required for SAFEIC
|
Data Required |
Possible Data Source |
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1. Number of days of the festival |
Organiser data |
|
2. Population of the impact area |
Statistics South Africa, Census data |
|
3. Total number of attendees |
Needs to be determined from ticket sales or crowd counts |
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4.Funding or Sponsorship from outside the impact area |
Organiser Data |
|
5. Total Organiser Earned Revenue |
Organiser Data on earned revenue from ticket sales, programme sales, venue hire etc. |
SAFEIC has three categories of data:
