What are the best ways to benchmark your event budget for transportation costs?

1 Define your transportation goals

Before you can benchmark your transportation costs, you need to define your transportation goals. What are you trying to achieve with your strategy? How does it align with the overall event objectives and audience expectations? Possible goals include enhancing the attendee experience by providing comfortable and safe transportation options, reducing the environmental impact of the event by choosing low-carbon transportation modes, increasing the visibility of the event through branding transportation vehicles or routes, saving money and time by negotiating favorable rates and contracts with providers, and minimizing risks and liabilities by complying with local regulations and insurance requirements. These goals will help determine which metrics and indicators to use to measure and benchmark your transportation costs.

2 Collect and analyze your transportation data

The next step is to collect and analyze your transportation data, which includes both quantitative and qualitative aspects of your transportation spending and performance. You can use sources such as event budgets, financial reports, invoices, contracts, surveys, feedback forms, logs, and records. Additionally, you should gather data from external sources like industry reports, market research, competitor analysis, or benchmarking tools to compare your transportation costs with other events or standards. For instance, the Event Transportation Cost Calculator from EventMB can estimate your transportation costs based on several factors like the number of attendees, the distance traveled, the type of vehicle, and the duration of the event.

3 Identify your transportation benchmarks

Once you have collected and analyzed your transportation data, you can identify your transportation benchmarks. These benchmarks are values or ranges used to evaluate your transportation costs and performance. You can use historical benchmarks, based on your past data, to track progress and improvement. Additionally, industry benchmarks, based on average or best practices of other events or organizations in your industry or sector, can help compare performance and competitiveness. Custom benchmarks, based on specific goals and objectives, allow you to set your own standards and targets for your strategy. When selecting benchmarks, make sure they are relevant and realistic for the event and goals. It is also important to review and update them regularly to reflect any changes or trends in data or environment.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?