Event Hosting

Explore Edmonton works in collaboration with tourism industry partners to showcase Alberta's capital city to the world. Edmonton’s hotels, attractions and businesses that depend on tourism for their success are looking for solutions to drive more visits, longer stays and increased tourism spending. 

By offering a variety of programs and services, Explore Edmonton wants to help our industry partners to thrive and prosper. Have an idea for a tourism business, need insights on how to best leverage your social media and create Instagram-worthy content or looking to host your next event or convention in Edmonton? Explore Edmonton is ready to provide advice and solutions.

Explore Edmonton has teams in the following areas: Destination Development, Edmonton Events, Marketing, Media, Meetings & Conventions, Public Affairs and Travel Trade.

Building Social Legacies: Through Mega, Major and Signature Sport Events

Hosting sport events can bring many positive benefits to the community. Traditionally, many of the benefits that motivate event hosts, governments and sponsors have focused predominantly on creating economic or sport impacts. More recently, mega, major and signature sport event organizers are being asked to help communities address long-standing social issues and to leave the community better than before. The case can be made that social legacies such as greater community cohesion, improved accessibility, additional community programming, enhanced volunteerism, greater overall sport participation, increased physical activity and improved health of citizens are just as relevant as and perhaps even more important than other event legacies.

These social legacies have been difficult for event hosts to understand, let alone deliver or measure. In addition, the resources and expertise of host organizations are too often focused and consumed with executing the logistical demands of a competition. Hosts need the expertise, partnerships, funding and organizational capacity to specifically target social legacies.

This resource provides the background and process for host committees, social agencies and governments to plan and deliver initiatives that leave social legacies. The resource defines social legacies, provides examples and introduces an eight-step framework for event hosts to use in planning and delivering social legacies.

Download Building Social Legacies: Through Mega, Major and Signature Sport Events. A print quality 54 MB file of the resource is available upon request.

An extensive literature review was conducted while developing this resource. You can access the extensive list of references that made up the literature review.

A significant shift in focus has taken place in the last couple of decades, with increasing attention paid to maximising social value for the long-term, and prioritising the needs of local people when hosting major events. Social Value in Major Events: A playbook of practical implementation has been developed using research undertaken in 2020-21 at the International Academy of Sport Science and Technology, applying academic evidence, case studies and interview data to set out how to create a sustainable, social value legacy over the lifetime of a major event. The playbook includes recommendations for cities in how to incorporate social value legacy when bidding or hosting.

Common Indicators for Measuring the Impacts of Events

Partners investing in events are increasingly seeking to deliver on more than just financial objectives. This applies to both public authorities seeking to align events with policies which positively impact on the lives of local populations, and commercial sponsors seeking to deliver corporate social responsibility strategies.

The challenge has become how event owners and investing partners demonstrate the value of events against these wider objectives in a meaningful, and cost effective way. Therefore, in order to address this challenge, the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF) commissioned work in March 2020 to consult with stakeholders involved in hosting events, and other industry specialists in research and evaluation, with the objective of establishing commonly agreed data points across all aspects of event impact. Download the 1st edition of this resource.