Do Trade Shows Really Make Nearby Hotels More Expensive to Book?

Methodology and evidence notes | 29 September 2026

Largest show-night premiums

LAMMA 2027 (NEC Birmingham): 2.10x initial / 1.89x repeat; median extra £66.25 initially / £69.75 repeat; Occupational Therapy Show 2026 (NEC Birmingham): 1.86x initial / 1.79x repeat; median extra £49.50 initially / £46.75 repeat; Brand Licensing Europe 2026 (Excel London): 1.80x initial / 1.79x repeat; median extra £52.25 initially / £46.50 repeat; Advanced Engineering / Euro Bus Expo overlapping-show unit (NEC Birmingham): 1.63x initial / 1.81x repeat; median extra £39.00 initially / £38.00 repeat; The Schools & Academies Show (NEC Birmingham): 1.54x initial / 1.54x repeat; median extra £27.50 initially / £27.50 repeat; DTX / Employee Benefits Live overlapping-show unit (Excel London): 1.54x initial / 1.54x repeat; median extra £47.00 initially / £48.50 repeat.

Ratios and pound differences are separate medians across matched hotels. Different listing membership can shift the ratio median even when the median cash difference rises, as at LAMMA; the repeat is not a fixed hotel basket.

Question and population

The study asks how captured hotel quotes around UK B2B trade shows compare with matched control nights, whether distance helps and whether mapped local hotel stock relates to premiums. The population is 35 usable B2B date groups at 9 venues.

Scope and exclusions

Only business-to-business trade shows are included. Consumer exhibitions, sport, concerts, racing and other non-trade events were excluded. Each show date was checked against the organiser website listed in the source register. Date groups that did not reach five matched hotels were excluded rather than shown without data. The study used a timestamped analysis protocol fixed before the trade-show quotes were collected; organiser dates were rechecked before publication.

Unit and matching

A date group is a venue event or overlapping-show group, with the first open day as the quoted show night. The retained dates run from 2026-10-06 to 2027-04-27. A group needs at least five matched hotels; each hotel needs at least two same-weekday calendar-screened control quotes. Exact hotel names are matched, rentals and hostels excluded, and distance restricted to at most ten miles. Overlapping groups refer to the earliest opening component, not all named shows opening that night.

There are 736 initial and 740 repeat hotel/group comparisons. The public quote register has 5870 unique capture-specific observations, each with a source URL, publisher, access time, original displayed amount, edition, minimal verbatim excerpt and locator. A hotel may appear in several date groups. The public source register contains 330 sources.

Formula and denominators

For each hotel, divide its show-night quote by the median of its matched control quotes. Take the median hotel ratio within each group, then the equal-weight median across groups. The typical premium is this ratio minus one, multiplied by 100. It is not the median of every pooled hotel comparison. Ratios of 1.00 indicate no premium; a group at 1.50 is at least 50% higher. Cash differences are calculated within hotels before aggregation, not by subtracting unrelated marginal medians.

Distance and supply

Distance bands use continuous Google-listed distances. They are not verified walking routes. High-premium bands pool hotels from groups with medians of at least 1.50; different bands contain different hotels and their mix is not controlled. Mapped supply counts use OpenStreetMap tourism=hotel features within fixed straight-line radii, deduplicated by OSM type and ID. They are not verified distinct establishments, hotel rooms or available inventory. OpenStreetMap data is © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under ODbL.

The three-mile supply association was Spearman rho 0.155, permutation p 0.365, n=35 date groups initially. Repeat values were rho 0.178, p 0.3018. At venue level, initial rho was 0.2, p 0.6187, n=9; repeat rho was 0.226, p 0.5606. Tests use 10,000 two-sided permutations, seed 7, without multiple-comparison adjustment. Shared hotels and venues mean observations are not independent.

What the repeat can and cannot show

Both captures occurred on the same day. The repeat tests measurement stability, including changes in listings, not how prices evolve towards arrival. No cheapest booking week, benefit from waiting or universal early-booking saving was tested. The publication shows both captures where the headline changed. Event attendance relative to room stock was not tested adequately, and no event-size conclusion is made.

Quote interpretation

These are displayed GBP offers at the default two-adult occupancy, not payments or verified available rooms. The same hotel can show different room types, rate conditions or providers between dates. Do not assume equivalent refundability or tax treatment beyond the displayed offer. Calendar screening cannot eliminate private or citywide demand. A missing displayed quote does not establish a sell-out. Sources are a venue-led snapshot, not a representative census or causal experiment.

Reproduction and refresh

The CSV downloads contain the date groups, matched pairs, captured quote evidence and sources. Join pair observation IDs to observation_id in the quotes CSV, and source IDs to the sources CSV. Recompute within-hotel control medians before group medians; keep initial and repeat separate. Raw page captures are not published; every quote keeps its source URL, excerpt and locator. Prices change, so repeat the capture before relying on current prices. Publishing organisation: Stand Central, an exhibition-display retailer, not a hotel provider.