Reducing the environmental impact of travel and transport at events begins with measuring and understanding these impacts. This foundational step allows you to put the right strategies and initiatives in place to lower emissions year after year.
onboard:earth created a Quick Guide to help event organisers collect audience and non-audience travel data and use it to identify key areas of impact.
Why Focus on Travel?
Travel and transport account for the majority of emissions from live events. If we’re going to tackle the climate crisis, we must measure, understand, and reduce these emissions.
Beyond environmental benefits, understanding how people travel to your event provides detailed insights into their behaviour. This data can help you improve the audience experience, enhance traffic planning, identify upselling opportunities, and work more effectively with your transport providers.
The Challenge:
Festivals and live events of all types and sizes often find it challenging to collect good travel and transport data, even those with experience and resources in sustainability.
Why? Events use multiple systems for different processes and stakeholders, from contracting and accreditation to artist or traffic management. Additionally, the “best moment” to ask people about their travel is elusive. Asking too far in advance means they haven’t confirmed plans; while asking on arrival can disrupt the flow of pedestrians or traffic. It seems simple, but it’s a hard nut to crack.
How onboard:earth Can Help:
At onboard:earth, we’ve been working with a range of partners to understand and solve this challenge for some time. In 2023, we worked with a focus group of festivals to compare approaches and identify knowledge gaps.
In 2024, with funding from Arts Council England, we partnered with Citizen Ticket on a pilot project to explore data collection methods. We also interviewed 10 festivals to truly get “under the bonnet” of this topic.
We built this Quick Guide using the insights from that journey. While there isn’t an easy, one-size-fits-all solution, we’ve shared best practice for collecting data based on the pilot study.
This Quick Guide is for all event organisers, large and small. It will help you:
- Collect audience travel data.
- Collect non-audience travel data for artists, suppliers, and crew.
- Know what to do with the data.
Here are some insights from the guide. Please download the full version for all the details, including essential survey questions, a list of travel modes and their carbon impacts, and advice on collecting data from non-audience travellers.
How to Collect Audience Travel Data
Most events can ask their ticket agents for postcode data from ticket sales, but you’ll ideally need more than that, plus additional insights from an audience survey.
Some ticket platforms provide the data you need, or you may be able to request access to it. It helps to formalise this request in your contract and request the data in a manageable format well in advance of ticket sales.
Since postcode data alone won’t tell you how people are traveling, here are three ways to find out their travel choices:
- Work with your Ticket Agent: Ask your ticket software provider to add survey questions (which we provide in the Quick Guide) as a step in the purchase process.
- Use Surveys: Add questions to pre-event, onsite, or post-event surveys. For example, Junction 2 festival uses a bar tab competition that asks travel questions and reminds people about onsite sustainability initiatives.
- Count Vehicle Passes: Use the number of vehicle passes sold to calculate how many cars travelled to the site.
Using the free onboard:earth Impact Tool, you can take your data sample, including postcode data and total numbers, and get an estimate for your overall audience travel footprint.
How to Collect Non-Audience Travel Data
Our research shows there isn’t a single approach for capturing all non-audience travel data, including deliveries. We recommend that events:
- Segment non-audience groups into key categories: (e.g., staff, contractors, traders, artists, deliveries)
- Identify existing touch points where you’re already engaging with them and can collect travel data.
- Make data collection mandatory if possible, or part of other mandatory processes like health and safety inductions.
- Talk to your crew accreditation software providers to see if and where they can add questions.
What Data to Collect?
The more data you ask for, the longer the process, and the more barriers there are to completion. Our research suggests two best-practice approaches:
- Make questions mandatory and an unavoidable part of an existing process.
- Make it as simple, easy, and quick as possible.
For full advice on where and how to collect data for all non-audience travellers, download our Quick Guide to Collecting Travel Data. It includes pros and cons for collecting data at various stages and which systems best suit smaller or larger events.
We also have a comprehensive Green Travel & Transport Guide for Festivals & Events to support you with proven strategies for reducing emissions in key areas of event-related travel.
Get in touch at hello@onboard.earth to access our free Travel Reporting Tool and talk about how we can support your low-carbon event-travel journey.