The economic importance of meetings and conferences: A satellite account approach

•We derive an estimate of the economic importance of meetings and conferences.•UK MICE in 2011 directly generated over £20bn of GVA in 2011, supporting 425,000 jobs.•Such estimation uses Tourism Satellite Account approaches to create a Meetings Satellite Account.•At city-scale, where policy is made, the cost of MSA compilation would be prohibitive.

Meetings and conventions (MICE) visitation is often considered an important element of the travel economy, and destinations target such activities to encourage their growth. It has hitherto been difficult to measure the economic significance of such activity at any spatial scale. Latterly, the development and codification of tourism satellite account (TSA) approaches to the economic measurement of tourism offers an opportunity to develop a parallel approach to understanding the MICE economy. This paper presents an estimate of the direct economic impact of MICE activity in the UK in 2011, following TSA approaches. The potential to extend the core Meetings Satellite Account, to estimate indirect economic impact and sub-national economic impacts, is also assessed.