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It's Your Money: Corpus Christi Convention and Visitor's Bureau
Posted: Feb 19, 2013 5:02 PM by Jessica Holley - jholley@kristv.com
Updated: Feb 19, 2013 11:25 PM
CORPUS CHRISTI - Corpus Christi is the number five tourist destination in Texas. Area beaches are the main attraction, but the convention and visitor's bureau works to make sure tourists know the city has more to offer. And to help do that the Convention and Visitors Bureau received nearly $3.8 million from the city.
In the state of Texas, each time someone stays in a hotel a hotel occupancy tax is charged. For Corpus Christi, a 7 percent tax is added on to every visitors room bill. Each fiscal year 40 percent of the money brought in on the hotel tax goes to the CVB through a contract it has with the city. That money then works to bring in more tourists to Corpus Christi.
Last year can estimated 7.1 million visitors traveled to Corpus Christi. They came to see our beaches, our attractions, and take part in our events. Many visitors say was the local advertising the CVB put out that drew them here. The CVB does a majority of its advertising in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston since the drive is under four hours.
"The majority of our money is really going to interactive marketing, because the world is moving that way, the tourism industry is moving that way," says Convention and Visitors Bureau CEO Keith Arnold.
But they still target the potential visitors through ads in newspapers and magazines, digital billboards, and through commercials. Most of the funding for this non-profit agency comes from the hotel occupancy tax from the city.
"We project this year spending about $14 million in hotel occupancy tax dollars. And of that about 3.8 million is programmed to the Visitors and Convention Bureau,"say Assistant City Manager Oscar Martinez.
"Our return to the city is extremely high, so we are an agency, but we are a sales and marketing agency and we are evaluated on economic return to directly to this community," says Arnold.
And that return brought in $550 million that tourists spent while visiting our city.
"It's a continuing upward spiral if we do our job well and if weather and all cooperate. Dollars from out of town, we receive a piece of that, we do our job, there are more dollars to work with, we are able to bring more visitors to town," says Arnold.
The CVB uses surveys and zip codes to track the effectiveness of its advertising. And the more effective it is, the more money they bring in to reach future visitors.
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