For years, destinations have relied on headline figures to explain the value of hosting events. Attendance numbers, hotel nights, or estimated visitor spend often stand in for deeper analysis. In Córdoba, Argentina, that approach is being questioned. A recent research programme led by the Instituto de Economía Política (IEP) at Insight 21, Universidad Siglo 21, working with Agencia Córdoba Turismo, Córdoba Convention Bureau and public sector partners, set out to examine how different types of events actually perform once spending patterns, fiscal flows, and territorial impact are taken into account.

 

Rather than focusing on a single flagship event, the study analysed a portfolio of major cultural, professional, and sporting events held between late 2024 and 2025. These included Paul McCartney’s concert at the Mario Alberto Kempes Stadium, which attracted 38,670 attendees, the International Oncology Congress with 1,061 participants, the Boca Juniors–Vélez Sarsfield football semi-final attended by 44,500 spectators, a round of the Motocross World Championship with more than 55,000 attendees, and several large-scale music festivals. Together, they provided a comparative basis for understanding how different event formats interact with the local economy.

Three Event Types, Three Distinct Economic Footprints

One of the clearest findings is that events generate value in very different ways, even when headline attendance figures appear comparable. Concerts and sports fixtures tend to concentrate spending around the event itself, with a large share of outlay linked to tickets, food and beverage inside venues, and short-term transport. Congresses, by contrast, show a more distributed pattern.

 

Although the International Oncology Congress attracted far fewer participants than the major stadium events, delegates stayed longer, used a wider range of services, and generated higher per-capita spending across accommodation, gastronomy, local transport, and professional services. The research tracked spending across ten categories, distinguishing between local residents, visitors from within the province, attendees from other provinces, and international participants.

 

This distinction matters. Spending by non-residents represents new money entering the destination, while resident spending often displaces consumption that would have occurred regardless of the event. Congresses, particularly international scientific meetings, performed strongly on this measure, with a higher proportion of participants travelling from outside the province or abroad.

Ticket multipliers reinforce the contrast. For congresses, registration fees account for only a small share of overall delegate expenditure, with accommodation, dining, and transport quickly outweighing the cost of participation. The result is a deeper and more diversified economic footprint.

Why Congresses Matter Differently

From a destination management perspective, these patterns carry practical implications. Congresses tend to smooth demand over several days, support year-round occupancy, and engage a broader local supply chain. They also generate a fiscal footprint that extends well beyond the host city.

  

The Córdoba study modelled how tax revenues linked to events are distributed across municipal, provincial, and national levels within Argentina’s federal system. For international congresses, more than half of total tax revenue ultimately flows to the national level, with a significant share redistributed to other provinces through tax-sharing mechanisms.

 

While this limits direct fiscal retention for the host city or province, it also strengthens the case for national and regional support for meetings and conventions. Events that attract high-spending, non-resident delegates contribute to public finances far beyond their immediate location.

 

Importantly, the research avoids ranking events as better or worse. Instead, it shows that they play different roles. Where concerts and sports fixtures deliver scale and visibility, congresses deliver depth, predictability, and professional legacy. For destinations seeking balanced economic development, that distinction is more useful than chasing attendance records.

From Measurement To Strategy

A central innovation of the Córdoba programme is the development of a digital twin for events. Rather than a static impact report, the model allows stakeholders to simulate different scenarios before an event takes place and to evaluate actual outcomes afterwards. Variables such as attendee origin, length of stay, transport choices, and accommodation use can be adjusted to test how changes affect economic and fiscal impact.

 

For public authorities, this supports evidence-based policy. Incentives, infrastructure investment, or sustainability measures can be calibrated using realistic projections rather than assumptions. For convention bureaux, the model strengthens bidding strategies by providing policymakers with credible projections. For organisers and associations, it offers a clearer view of how their events interact with local economies beyond immediate venue costs.

 

The framework also opens the door to measuring longer-term legacies, particularly for scientific and medical congresses. Beyond economic activity, the methodology allows destinations to explore links between meetings and outcomes such as skills development, knowledge transfer, and public health benefits.

Positioning Córdoba Internationally

This analytical work forms part of Córdoba’s broader positioning as a meetings destination. The city has consolidated its role as a leading MICE destination in Argentina’s interior and continues to feature in International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) rankings for international meetings.

 

Connectivity has become a central pillar of this strategy. Córdoba’s Ambrosio Taravella International Airport has developed into the second-largest air hub in Argentina after Buenos Aires, with more than 1,000 direct international flights per month and expanding links across Latin America and Europe in 2026. This growth has made Córdoba more accessible to international organisations and reduced the need for transfers through the capital.

 

The impact study has become a strategic asset in that positioning. At FIEXPO Latin America 2025 in Costa Rica, Córdoba won the Convention Bureau Challenge, with the jury recognising the methodological rigour of its impact measurement approach and its relevance for destination strategy. The award validated a shift away from promotional narratives towards evidence-based storytelling. Building on that recognition, the provincial government is set to present the case study at FITUR 2026 in Madrid, using the Córdoba experience to discuss MICE tourism, legacy measurement, and evidence-based event policy with an international audience.

 

As competition for international meetings intensifies, Córdoba’s experience offers a useful reference point. The lesson is not that one type of event should dominate a destination’s calendar, but that understanding what each event format truly delivers is essential. For associations, the message is equally clear. Congresses may not fill stadiums, but when measured properly, their contribution to local economies, professional ecosystems, and long-term development is difficult to overlook.

 

 

 

FIEXPO Latin America will take place in Costa Rica on 8–11 June 2026, marking the event’s second edition in the country. The event continues to position itself as a platform for sustainable development, innovation, and professionalisation within the meetings industry across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The ICCA Latin America and Caribbean Summit in Medellín revealed more than venues; it showcased the city’s transformation, told through communities reclaiming hope, creating opportunity and turning resilience into legacy. Over two decades, Medellín has rewritten its narrative from violence to innovation, from division to inclusion. Today, international events, sustainable tourism and social projects converge to empower communities and position the city as both a leading meetings hub and a living case study in how innovation can reshape a metropolis.

Empowering Communities, Reshaping Medellín

  

A Region Prepared for Global Events

Read more: Discover how the 17th ICCA Latin American and Caribbean Summit in Medellín brought together association leaders, bureaux and global experts to explore innovation, knowledge exchange and legacy creation across the region.

    

This year, Costa Rica will become the epicentre of the meetings industry in Latin America when it hosts FIEXPO. They are also forging a sustainability partnership with ICCA to further develop one of the country’s strengths: environmental protection. We sat down with the country’s leading players to talk about sustainability, technology and talent.

Costa Rica will host FIEXPO LATIN AMERICA for the next three years, taking over from neighbouring Panama as the host of the most important tradeshow in the region. FIEXPO is the place par excellence where destinations and suppliers connect with buyers in LATAM and establish links with political decision-makers to guarantee economic, intercultural and social benefits for all. Enjoying a convenient central location that places it halfway to this annual meeting, Costa Rica has collected several accolades and upgrades in terms of infrastructure, connectivity, local support and education.

With a robust hotel complex that comprises a total of 50,500 rooms and the construction of a new convention centre with capacity for meetings of up to 3,000 people, Costa Rica has taken a key step towards becoming a beacon destination for meetings and incentive travel in Latin America. “We have been working on a strategy for over ten years with our value chain, based on the pillars of service, quality and professionalisation to be competitive on a cost-benefi t basis. In other words, we cannot sleep on the returns the country gets from its forests and parks. The experience has to be greater than the destination alone,” told us Tatiana Orozco, Executive Director of Costa Rica Convention Bureau, during the ICCA LATAM & Caribbean Chapter 2024.

This commitment to sustainability is not new. Almost two decades ago, Costa Rica defined a tourism model rooted in its environmental and forest heritage, guiding tourism infrastructure and a supply chain based on balancing social, economic and environmental development – ultimately giving rise to the MICE Forest project. Costa Rica is the only country to meet all five of the United Nations Development Programme’s criteria for measuring environmental sustainability and ranks third in the Americas on the Environmental Performance Index. The nation has twice been ranked as the country with the best performance in environmental sustainability by the New Economics Foundation’s Happy Planet Index.
 

Moreover, Costa Rica has around 6% of the world’s biodiversity – the country with the highest density of species per area in the world – and is a global leader in environmental protection with investment policies in renewable energies. “In 1995, Costa Rica was experiencing a huge deforestation problem and our political decision-makers decided to take drastic measures. Today, we have more than 26% of our territory protected and we are at around 99% in clean energy generation. It has been a strategy that has evolved, and although it’s true that we started from the environmental side, today we have a very solid strategy with the other two social and economic pillars. We also want to leave an impact on a global level, as we are committed to making every event we host carbon neutral,” she adds.

At the same time, the convention bureau also sees the sector as a viable alternative for tackling the problem of talent drain, which is one of the key challenges facing Latin America. “What is happening right now is that new generations are not going to put money before their mental health, their personal development and their own professional experiences. We can resolve this issue with specific conferences to encourage young people to take part and understand the importance of this segment, because we have to sell the destination to them too.” The sustainability factor has given the country a competitive edge, but the number of multinationals the country is home to has also enabled them to realise another outpouring of knowledge. “42% of our events are in the medical industry, because all the microchips for medical components and devices that are manufactured in the world come from Costa Rica. We are almost an intermediate assembly platform for medtech. Other sectors that we prioritise are technology and education,” says Orozco.

Costa Rica's Meeting House

Costa Rica has always enjoyed leading status in ecotourism, adventure, leisure and even wellness, but in the meetings industry its journey is only in the beginning. At least that is what Álvaro Rojas, General Manager of the Costa Rica Convention Centre (CRCC) shared with us: “We built our strategy just seven years ago and the first change we had to make was to realise that this industry worked in a totally different way to others. With a series of consultants and advisors, and also using the example of other sister destinations in the Americas, we were able to readjust the strategy and focus on something that generates value.” Opened six years ago, the CRCC is a landmark in the country’s sustainable design with car parking areas interspersed with endemic tropical plantations and extensive biological ditches for rainwater management – critical considerations that led to its LEED Gold certification.
 

“Our visitors’ perspective on sustainability generates a lot of value for our local event network. By instance, what impact does your event have on CO2 emissions? This requires a technique, a calculator, audited and certified results to know how to off set carbon emissions from a corporate governance perspective,” he adds. The centre has its own post-operational methodology called Carbon Clear Events by Heroica, which has been used to calculate and mitigate this carbon burden: “We are currently measuring all the excess carbon we produced in 2023 with the help of our carbon calculator, in order to generate positive compensation with the State of Costa Rica through a foundation called FONAFIFO.”

In Latin America, around 20% of the types of events being held this year were not even brought up before the pandemic: “We are talking about blockchain, the Internet Of Things, cryptography, and a whole series of new topics. Specifically, the issue of semiconductors is fundamental for the Costa Rican government because we are the hub in a nearshoring to bring semiconductors to the United States.” According to Álvaro, this has created a very interesting opportunity for the local meetings industry, “The meetings industry has a very dynamic and adaptable belt for attracting local talent, because in six months we can change our academic and technological agenda. Therefore, the Costa Rican government now relies on the meetings industry to support its entire global strategy, such as semiconductors.”