Determinants of visitors’ expenditure across a portfolio of events

Destinations are increasingly recognising the advantages of managing their calendar of events as a strategic portfolio. Currently, however, there is no accepted, workable and proven technique for identifying the most efficient variable(s) to employ as a basis for strategic intervention. This study develops a spare regression model, based on the LASSO method, to select an efficient subset of determinants of visitor expenditure across five annual events taking place in Madeira, Portugal. The results indicate that event attendees’ income, length of stay and travel party size are significant determinants of total expenditure across all the events. Adopting strategic measures to influence these variables, if duly implemented at the portfolio level, can enable the cross-leveraging of additional expenditure that would be inaccessible to the destination if the Events were acting independently of one another. This could, in turn, enable the destination to use its events efficiently to enhance its overall competitiveness.