Event Data & Economic Impact Analyst Contractor at Discover Durham in Discover Durham - Durham, NC 27701

Job description

• Organization: Discover Durham
• Location: Durham, NC / Hybrid
• Engagement: Independent Contractor
• Reports to: EVP of Strategic Initiatives
• Hourly rate: $55-75
• Discover Durham seeks a highly analytical, curious and detail-oriented contractor to help us measure and communicate the economic impact of festivals, cultural events and other tourism-driving events throughout Durham County.
• Economic impact analysis is an important part of how Discover Durham demonstrates the value of Durham's event ecosystem, evaluates opportunities for future investment, and works with partners to recruit, retain and grow events that attract visitors to the destination.
• We are looking for someone who is exceptionally good at making sense of imperfect data.
• Durham's events rarely fit neatly into a spreadsheet. Some are ticketed; many are free. Some take place over a weekend; others span several weeks. Some occur at a single venue; others activate locations throughout the community. Event organizers also have varying levels of sophistication in tracking attendance, visitor origins and overnight stays.
• The successful contractor will combine quantitative analysis with sound judgment to turn these varied inputs into consistent, credible and defensible economic impact estimates.
• Prior experience with tourism economic impact analysis is helpful but not required. Discover Durham will provide access to and training on the Destinations International Event Impact Calculator (EIC), the industry-standard platform we use to generate event economic impact estimates.
• Success is not simply producing an economic impact number.
• Our goal is to produce estimates that are credible, consistent, explainable and useful for decision-making. A successful contractor will help Discover Durham establish a methodology that allows us to confidently explain not only what an event's estimated economic impact is, but also how we arrived at it, what assumptions were necessary and how confident we are in the underlying information.
• The ultimate objective is to strengthen Discover Durham's ability to understand the visitor value of Durham's event ecosystem and use that intelligence to make strategic decisions about which events we recruit, retain, support and help grow.

Responsibilities

• The contractor will work with Discover Durham staff and event partners to produce economic impact analyses for selected Durham festivals and events.
• Review attendance, ticketing, geographic, lodging, event schedule and other information submitted by festival and event organizers.
• Assess the completeness, reliability and reasonableness of organizer-provided data rather than treating all submitted figures as equally reliable.
• Identify gaps, inconsistencies or potential double-counting in attendance and visitor data and work with Discover Durham staff and/or event organizers to resolve them.
• Translate locally collected audience information into appropriate assumptions about local attendees, regional day visitors and overnight visitors.
• Develop reasonable methodologies for events that do not fit traditional event models, including free events, multi-venue events, citywide events, recurring programming and festivals spanning multiple weeks or months.
• Distinguish attendance or admissions from unique attendees when appropriate and account for individuals participating in multiple days or performances.
• Use available supporting data — such as ticket ZIP codes, hotel information, surveys, historical event results or other relevant sources — to strengthen or validate assumptions when available.
• Become proficient in the Destinations International Event Impact Calculator (EIC) and use the platform to generate economic impact analyses.
• Review EIC outputs for reasonableness and identify situations in which an input or assumption may be producing a misleading result.
• Maintain clear documentation of methodologies, assumptions, data limitations and adjustments made for each analysis.
• Produce concise final reports or summaries that Discover Durham can share with event organizers, community partners, policymakers and other stakeholders.
• Help Discover Durham establish a more standardized methodology for collecting, evaluating and translating festival and event data into economic impact analyses.
• Recommend improvements to Discover Durham's existing post-event data collection process and questions to increase the quality of future analyses.
• Complete orientation and training on Discover Durham's economic impact reporting process and the Event Impact Calculator.
• Review Discover Durham's existing event data collection form, historical reports and methodologies.
• Recommend improvements to data collection and documentation practices.
• Complete economic impact analyses for an agreed-upon portfolio of Durham festivals and events.
• Develop a standardized working file or methodology log documenting the source, confidence level and rationale for major inputs used in each analysis.
• Identify opportunities to improve the quality of audience and visitor data collected from Durham event partners over time.

Requirements

• The Questions You'll Help Us Answer
• This work goes beyond entering numbers into a calculator. We are looking for someone comfortable tackling questions such as:
• An organizer reports 50,000 attendees. Is that 50,000 unique people, 50,000 admissions or an estimate of foot traffic? What evidence supports the figure?
• A free downtown festival has no ticketing data. What information can we reasonably use to estimate the share of attendees who came from outside Durham County?
• An event organizer reports that 40% of attendees live outside Durham County. How should we determine which of those attendees are regional day visitors versus overnight visitors?
• A festival presents 30 performances over six weeks. How should repeat attendance be treated so that the economic impact calculation does not assume every admission represents a different visitor?
• An event takes place across numerous Durham venues. How do we construct a consistent picture of visitation when attendance is being reported differently by individual locations?
• We don't expect every dataset to provide a perfect answer. We do expect the analyst to develop a reasonable answer, explain why it is reasonable and document the assumptions behind it.
• We're particularly interested in candidates with experience in data analysis, research, statistics, economics, public policy, business intelligence, market research or a related discipline.
• Exceptional quantitative reasoning and analytical problem-solving skills.
• Experience cleaning, interpreting and reconciling incomplete or inconsistent datasets.
• Experience with Destinations International Event Impact Calculator.
• Strong Excel and/or Google Sheets skills; proficiency with other analytical or visualization tools is welcome.
• Ability to distinguish correlation, estimation and assumption from directly observed data.
• Comfort developing methodologies when a dataset does not provide a straightforward answer.
• Strong attention to detail and an instinct for questioning numbers that don't appear reasonable.
• Ability to clearly document analytical decisions so that another person can understand and replicate the methodology.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate quantitative findings for non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work independently while knowing when additional information or organizational judgment is needed.
• Familiarity with Durham and/or the Triangle is strongly preferred.
• Experience in tourism, hospitality, festivals or economic impact analysis is a plus, but is not required. We are more interested in finding an excellent analyst and critical thinker who can learn our industry and tools than someone whose experience happens to include a particular economic impact platform.

Skills

Required

• Strong Excel and/or Google Sheets skills
• Ability to work independently