Visit Austin

For fy 21/22, Convention sales generated 372,335 hotel room nights. Convention center bookings represented 136,773 of those room nights. 3,814 leads were generated representing over 3.8 million room nights - afro tech - november 2022, 5345 hotel room nights- 13,000 attendees- coindesk consensus - april 2023, 12,237 hotel room nights - 17,000 attendees- keller williams mega camp - august 2023, 9,000 hotel room nights - 6,000 attendees- blockworks - september 2023, 9,950 hotel room nights - 10,000 attendees- Texas computer education association - february 2023, 12,280 hotel room nights - 12,000 attendees- association of certified fraud examiners - july 2025, 7,750 hotel room nights - 3,300 attendees- american trucking association - october 2026, 6,390 hotel room nights - 3,000 attendees.convention services provided meeting services to 2,123 meetings. Additionally, Convention services conducted 104 site visits and planning meetings. Supplier referrals and leads were sent to 786 local businesses. The team also met with 115 local businesses to educate them on working with the Convention and meetings market in austin.the Austin film commission facilitated 91,329 production leads, 84 production packages, 31 production starts and 995 production days during fiscal year 2021-22.the Visit Austin tourism department focused on achieving direct growth with tour providers and partnerships with industry entities including brand usa, united states travel association, hablo and the Texas tourism office. In fy 21/22 we returned to in-person activities including attending sales missions, trade shows and hosting familiarization tours of the destination. We continued to support the local hospitality partners and developed and maintained your product in several key markets. The tourism staff also worked with the Austin airport to secure and reinstate air service and including the launches of two new flights from europe. Paid advertising efforts were scaled back in fy 21/22 vs 2019 due to a smaller media budget. We launched our creative for a full planning season run with significantly fewer media partners. We also relaunched our music marketing program generating more than 1.1 million referrals to local businesses, music venues and artists. Austin's established digital efforts continued to perform strongly. Our website visitaustin.org earned 5.5 million unique visits and more than 13 million pageviews. Our social media accounts (facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok) earned 66.6 million total impressions and 3.4 million engagements. Increasing traveler preference and use of digital media also extends to our publications as evidenced by the number of visitor guide requests: 78,506.we worked with satisfi labs to add an ai chat bot to our website to assist with visitor inquiries, and continue to direct traffic to relevant information throughout the website.

Strategic alliances fy 21-22 program accomplishments include but are not limited to: 1) generated approximately $570,000 in revenue via various partner program activities, sales/marketing participation agreements, event sponsorships, etc 2) conducted successful rollout of 2023 partner program opportunities sign ups; 3) facilitated 8 hotel assessment agreements, resulting in $214,575 in revenue; 4) secured donated services for various initiatives, resulting in $268,154 in expense offset; 5) renegotiated all 2022 "industry" partnerships (professional Convention management association (pcma) american society of association executives (asae), etc); to provide cost savings to Visit Austin as well as facilitated program shifts and renegotiated assets based on new program formats for each organization, 6) facilitated production of the 2021 Visit Austin annual meeting (first in-person va event since pandemic), facilitated "safe" event layout and show flow as well as registration portal, following current covid recommendations and protocols, secured over 400 participants, negotiated revenue via sponsorships (in the amount of $26,000), facilitated sponsor recognition, negotiated and secured donated services/expense offset in the amount of $148,587; as well as all event layout, design and logistics and overall full project management and oversight to ensure goals were met 7) leveraged our strategic partnership with industry organizations to create unique "austin-centric" promotions activations and content to provide Austin brand exposure and exposure to meeting and Convention planner attendees, incorporating live music from Austin whenever possible to showcase Austin as live music capital of the world

Music marketing office confirmed 128 performance bookings for Austin musicians and had a total of 505 music inquiries. The music offices' key accomplishments included supporting local musicians with performance opportunities as well as 7 music licensing opportunities for Austin songwriters. The music office produced a series of media and performance opportunities for an Austin local musician in london and glasgow. The music office also brought back the "local and live" music and maker series to our Visit Austin visitor center featuring 7 performers during sxsw week as well as 6 performances in the fall. In august to sept 2022, Visit Austin partnered with city of Austin's music and entertainment division to create a music focused recovery campaign and media buy. The 2022 recovery campaign resulted in 7.1m brand impressions and over 22k direct Austin artist and venue referrals. In addition, the music office hosted Austin music showcases and performances in dallas, nashville, Washington d.c., and chicago in conjunction with the Bureau's sales and marketing efforts. The director of music marketing also joined the recording academy / grammy class of 2022.