Looking for evidence of recovery in event data

Looking for evidence of recovery in event data

With so many events in our national event index at any given time, we always have a good insight into the overall activity of the Event industry in Australia.

As an example, the lead up to the holidays and the weeks that follow, are typically the busiest times of year for tourism and events. We expected this summer season to be different, but we were quite surprised to see the data point so strongly towards recovery.

The end of 2019 and the early part of 2020 saw the bushfires and then Covid-19 cripple the tourism and events sector, which resulted in a huge drop in event activity in our data.

Our national feed peaked at around 230,000 events across Australia before the lockdowns began in early March. We then saw our total number of event listings drop by more than half, to just above 100,000 events. Very few new events were being added online and the remaining events were mostly updated as being cancelled or postponed.

The effect on website traffic was just as dramatic.

Before the Pandemic the organic traffic to our primary website https://everi.events was trending higher. In January 2020 the number of users on the site doubled and by February it had doubled again to more than 40,000 users. We hit nearly 50,000 pageviews in December, 75,000 in January, with a peak at 145,000 pageviews in February.

As the restrictions and shutdowns came into effect in March, we saw a drop off across all website traffic. (Our pageviews reduced to an average of 30,000 per month from March through to November.)

As 2020 progressed event numbers slowly began to return. Major events were, and are still rare, but smaller local events have come back quickly and in numbers. Online events were added to the feed mid-year, and they helped to deliver something of value to those communities in lockdown. Our partner the Digital Innovation Futures Victoria, took their festival completely online for 2020, and were able to keep their audience engaged with online events and a platform update to support on-demand events.

As of February 2021, we are reaching daily new event traffic record, with listings reaching almost 275,000 events.

The top 10 event categories, and the percentages of events are listed below.

• Business 19%
• Lifestyle 14%
• Educational 14%
• Arts 12%
• Community 10%
• Music 7%
• Sports 6%
• Food & Wine 5%
• Festivals 3%
• Family 3%

From the list above, you can see that business events are the largest group in the mix. Since adding online events to Everi, they now make up 10% of the feed and the majority of those are business events. Many business and community services are being offered online, as it less risky and has become a far more acceptable way to deliver content.

Website traffic was back to normal levels as of November 2020. December was even busier with 30% more traffic than the previous year and January 2021 outperformed what was a record January in 2020. Website traffic and event numbers still have seasonality of peaks around the holidays, but it clear from what we have seen that the traffic reflects the amount of event activity available to the community.

It has been promising to see that there is a significant appetite for local and community events across the country, especially considering major events have been almost non-existent for the past 12 months, with no sign of when they will return properly without the rollout of a vaccine in Australian.

Looking at the numbers of events and traffic to https://everi.events this summer, we are pleased with the activity. Despite the impact and restrictions of Covid, we are seeing evidence of an active event industry, albeit a slightly different one to before.

If you have specific questions about broader event data patterns, please feel free to reach out to us at info@everi.com.au or contact us here.