The Veracity Premium: What Cannot Be Replicated Digitally

distinction — attributed to Amy Calvert

The 2026 Oxford Economics study quantified something the industry has asserted for decades but could not measure: seventy percent of survey respondents identified face-to-face relationship building as the outcome most difficult to replicate digitally. Twenty-eight percent said they would lose revenue without in-person events. Calvert describes this as the veracity premium -- the proposition that the in-person moment is not substitutable, now measured and sourced rather than asserted. The distinction matters for advocacy: the argument that gatherings are infrastructure, not hospitality, requires evidence that the thing being gathered for cannot be achieved through the cheaper alternative. The study supplies that evidence. Without it, the industry is arguing from sentiment.

Calvert's account of the 2026 EIC/Oxford Economics Global Economic Significance study and the specific survey data on digital substitutability.

in-person-value, digital-substitution, face-to-face, economic-argument