Visit Austin

Convention services team provided meeting services on 2,917 accounts. Additionally, Convention services conducted 106 site visits and planning meetings. Local businesses received 1,059 supplier referrals and leads. The team also met with 179 local businesses to educate them on working with the Convention and meetings market in Austin. The Austin film commission facilitated 89,301 production leads, 71 production packages, 29 production starts and 397 production days fiscal year 2022-23. Marketing/communications -- paid advertising efforts continued to be scaled back in fy 22/23 vs 2019 due to a smaller media budget. We launched a new media and creative campaign in summer 2023, "Visit Austin - you're in for a show." In our music office, we have seen a resurgence in music recovery. Between august and september, we ran a campaign in partnership with the city of Austin's music & entertainment division. This campaign yielded 3.8m impressions and had just over 15k direct local venue & artist referrals. Our website visitaustin.org earned 6.2m unique visits and more than 15.1m pageviews. Our social media accounts (facebook, instagram, twitter, tiktok) earned 44.2m total impressions and 3.69m engagements. Most notably, we saw a 71.9% increase in link clicks driving to custom content about Austin for potential Visitors. Increasing traveler preference and use of digital media also extends to our publications as evidenced by the number of visitor guide requests: 72,084. We also did a complete refresh of our translated sections of visitaustin.org into 7 languages. Following our update destination videos released last year, we also released 10 new district videos showcasing Austin's entertainment districts and areas of town. During this production, we featured more than 165 local businesses and worked with 10 local musicians on the music tracks. Tourism -- leisure travel has been driving recovery for our hospitality partners. 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 partnership with travel Texas, we produced an ipw 2023 activation at the alamo with travel Texas and hosted 60+ media and travel trade guests pre/post conference. We have expanded contracting with international-based representation to assist with ongoing marketing and flight service activities in the uk, europe, mexico, canada, asia and latin/central america. The tourism staff also worked with the Austin airport to secure and reinstate air service including the launch of the panama city flight on copa in july 2023. Convention sales generated 609,922 hotel room nights. Convention center bookings represented 153,868 of those room nights. 4,466 leads were generated representing over 4.86m room nights.significant bookings include: behind the chair -- august 2023, 3,970 hotel room nights, 2,800 attendeesafrotech-blavity -- november 2023, 7,745 hotel room nights, 15,000 attendeesworkhuman -- april 2024, 7,380 hotel room nights, 2,000 attendeescoindesk-consensus -- may 2024, 10,000 hotel room nights, 15,000 attendeeskeller williams realty international -- august 2024, 9,233 hotel room nights, 8,000 attendeesclio -- october 2024, 6,092 hotel room nights, 3,000 attendeesalteryx -- january 2025, 6,555 hotel room nights, 3,000 attendees

Strategic alliances -- fy 22-23 program accomplishments include but are not limited to: 1) generated approximately $795,000 in revenue via various partner program activities, sales/marketing participation agreements, event sponsorships, etc. ; 2) conducted successful rollout of 2024 partner program opportunities sign ups; 3) facilitated 9 hotel assessment renewals, resulting in $254,843 in revenue; 4) secured inkind/donated services for various initiatives, resulting in $324,981 in expense offset; 5) renegotiated all 2023 "industry" partnerships (professional Convention management association (pcma) american society of association executives (asae), Texas society of associations executives (tsae), etc.) To provide cost savings to Visit Austin as well as facilitated program shifts and renegotiated assets based on new program formats and offerings for each organization; 6) facilitated production and oversight of the 2022 Visit Austin annual meeting for approximately 600 attendees resulting in increased attendance, registration revenue, sponsorship revenue and donated services/inkind over the previous year; 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 141 performance bookings for Austin musicians and had a total of 626 music inquiries. The music offices' key accomplishments included supporting local musicians with performance opportunities as well as 11 music licensing opportunities for Austin songwriters. The music office also brought back the "local and live" music and maker series to our Visit Austin visitor center featuring 5 performers during sxsw week in 23 as well as 5 performances in fall 22. In august to sept 2023, Visit Austin partnered with city of Austin's music and entertainment division to create a music-focused recovery campaign and media buy. The 2023 recovery campaign resulted in 3.8m+ brand impressions and 15,473 direct artists and venue referrals. In addition, the music office hosted Austin music showcases and performances in london, glasgow, chicago, Washington d.c., san antonio, and dallas in conjunction with the Bureau's sales and marketing efforts.