Are you planning a fantastic meeting in Madrid, a Kathmandu conference, or an Idaho incentive? Maybe you are just traveling to Cincinnati, Chicago, or San Francisco… Maybe you got that hot new job offer to plan meetings for that kick-ass association in Washington, DC. The reason does not matter because if you are an event planner headed somewhere new, you must know what crap is going to cost because crap adds up.
We all know that you can find the cost of living for far-flung places several ways. You can go-a-Googling. You can call up that lovely lady at the local CVB, you know, the one that never calls you back. You can consult the stars. You can even call your local wizard, and he can whip up a budgeting potion for you. While these things may or may not work, you could head over to Numbeo and type in the city name, and BAM… information is at your fingertips.
According to Numbeo, they are:
Numbeo is the world’s largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide. Numbeo provides current and timely information on world living conditions including cost of living, housing indicators, health care, traffic, crime and pollution.
To say it in simple terms, by using Numbeo, you can find the average cost of stuff, ranging from restaurant meals and taxi rides to hotel stays and apartment rentals. You can also see the odds of getting whacked in the head by a mugger and how much the post-whack emergency room visit is going to cost you… and you can do it for hundreds of cities across the globe. Hundreds.
Here is a look at Chicago:
Now, this is just a screenshot of the top of the page. You can dig a whole lot deeper. You can dive right into the rabbit hole and spend a good amount of time digging.
Just think of the uses for this type of data.
You can now calculate the actual cost of attending your event, what to budget for staff per diems (if you are a nice person), or you can simply plot your next vacation.
