By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County commissioners court members said they would like to see additional, more in-depth information from a program the Del Rio Chamber of Commerce is using to track data on visitors to the county.
The court heard a presentation on the chamber’s Placer.ai program during its Nov. 6 regular meeting.
outreach team, makes a presentation to county commissioners court about at Placer.ai
program the chamber uses to tourist and visitor data like attendance at local events.
Gonzalez made her presentation to the court during its Nov. 6 regular meeting. (Photo by
Karen Gleason)
County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. introduced the presentation, telling the court, “This is a program that the Del Rio Chamber, Del Rio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the county put money together to pay the $18,000 and change (program fee). This program will keep track of different events within the community, how many people went to the event.”
Bethany Gonzalez, who works with membership and outreach for the Del Rio Chamber of Commerce, made the presentation. She was joined at the meeting by Debbie Guerra, executive assistant to the chamber’s visitors bureau.
Gonzalez said she would be speaking about the contributions made toward the events held locally for the eclipse festival in April and about the Placer.ai program the chamber uses to track a variety of data collected from visitors to local events.
“First of all, I want to thank you, the county, for your contributions and support, and we hope to show you how your support impacted our efforts and the community,” Gonzalez said.
She first spoke about April’s Eclipse Fest and told the court the chamber advertised the event in magazines and other print media, social media and in signage.
She said local, regional and national media covered the event.
Gonzalez said other organizations throughout the community were encouraged to put events together in the days surrounding the date of the actual eclipse to create a citywide festival.
“We did see the community rise together. We had so many events throughout the community,” she said, adding some regional and national news outlets came to Del Rio for the event “to give a different narrative about the border.”
“With this advertising and national coverage, we saw an increase in our hotel occupancy tax (assessed on the cost of hotel/motel rooms),” Gonzalez said.
She presented a table showing comparisons of the funds generated from the hotel occupancy tax from 2023 to 2024. The funds reflect income from the 1,015 hotel/motel rooms available in Del Rio.
For the first three months of 2024, hotel occupancy tax revenues increased 45.5 percent over the first quarter of 2023, but the biggest increase was posted in April. In April, local hotel occupancy tax revenues were recorded at $1,806,962.40, a 67.8 percent increase over the $1,076,577.67 in revenues recorded in April 2023.
“That shows the people that came in that month for the eclipse and all the events. The increase was because of the intentional advertisement and community involvement,” Gonzalez said.
The report Gonzalez showed the court also revealed that hotel occupancy tax revenues fell in the two months following April, dropping 37.9 percent in May compared to May 2023 and 56.2 percent in June compared to June 2023. The sharps drops in May and June contributed to an overall decline in hotel occupancy tax revenues for the second quarter of the year, 3.7 percent lower than revenue reported in the second quarter of 2023.
Gonzalez went over statistics from a concert series held as part of the Eclipse Fest.
The statistics gathered show 20.5 percent of concert ticket holders came from outside Texas, including U.S. states of Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and South Dakota, as well as Washington, D.C.
Several other countries were represented as well, including citizens of Canada and Finland.
Points of origin for ticketholders to the Eclipse Fest concert series included 17.5 percent from Eagle Pass, 15.2 percent from West Texas, 11.3 percent from counties adjacent to Val Verde County, 10.3 percent from the San Antonio area, 7 percent from Alpine, 5.6 percent from the Austin area, 5.6 percent from the Houston area, 3 percent from the Texas Panhandle region, 2 percent from the Rio Grande Valley, 1 percent from other areas of Texas, 0.7 percent from Abilene and 0.3 percent from Ciudad Acuña.
She said visitors from out of town “posted amazing reviews” about Del Rio, citing its level of hospitality and the ease of getting around the city.
Gonzalez went over Placer.ai report generated about attendance at the various Eclipse Fest events.
The report showed the “epicenter” of the events, the Del Rio Civic Center, had 11,200 visits over the four days of the festival, with 3,700 visits on the Monday during which the eclipse occurred.
She highlighted a “Chalk the Walk” event held at the Casa De La Cultura, which attracted 529 visits, and the Casa had a total of 874 visits over the four days of the festival.
Also popular were events on Main Street, with events at the Shops on South Main, located in the 200 block of that street, drawing a total of 2,272 visits over the four days, and events in lower downtown, near Mesquite Creek Outfitters, drawing a total of 7,562 visits over the four days.
The report showed 977 visits to the Amistad National Recreation Area on Monday, the day of the actual eclipse.
“The national park also reported that all of their campsites were full during the event,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said an annual event done at the Whitehead Memorial Museum, Cajun Fest, was moved to coincide with Eclipse Fest.
“They saw a 40 percent increase in attendance at their event from last year, so that was a major increase for them,” she said, noting the report counted 648 visits.
Owens asked if the report counted if a single visitor attended an event, left and then returned.
Gonzalez said the Placer.ai report indicated 29,200 individual visitors, with 52,600 overall visits, which included repeat visits to various venues and events.
“That’s why the overall number of visits is higher, because someone could have gone and come back throughout the day or the event. . .We want to see those two numbers get as close as possible, because that means they stayed and didn’t leave,” she said.
Owens commented, “One of the things, when we hand out HOT (hotel occupancy tax) money, that we’re always concerned about, is it worth the dollars? So this (technology) will give us an idea, moving forward, is it really worth the dollars.”
“And you’ll see, once I explain more about Placer, how in-depth it can get, where you can go in and target sponsorships and actually give a report to those sponsors that this is where the people are coming to your event are going while they’re in the community,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez then presented some statistics from Placer on other events that have occurred in the community.
She said the George Paul Memorial Bull Riding tallied 7,200 visits over its Friday and Saturday run, with 4,400 visits on Saturday.
The Rotary Club Rodeo, also a two-day event, had 5,700 visits, with 3,300 on its second day, a Saturday.
The Cinco de Mayo events had 9,100 visits over the course of its three days, with the most visits, 4,500, on Sunday, the last day of the event.
The city’s Fourth of July festivities, held over two days, drew a total of 8,400 visits, with the most visits, 5,000, tallied on the first day of the event.
Gonzalez said the Fiesta de Amistad parade tallied 4,620 visits, and the county’s Halloween Maze had 2,380 visits.
The highest number of visits was recorded for Laughlin Air Force Base Air Show on March 9, with 19,800 recorded visits.
County Commissioner Pct. 3 Beau Nettleton asked Gonzalez if the program could factor in the hotel occupancy tax dollars spent for each event.
“I’m interested in the dollars spent to attract the people (for each event). . . so we can figure out how much it’s costing to attract each person,” Nettleton said.
Gonzalez said she would check with the company from whom the chamber buys the program.
“Like, the Rotary Rodeo had 5,000 visitors and if we spent $5,000, that’s $1 a person, but if we spent $20,000, then it’s that much more per person,” Nettleton added.
Gonzalez showed an example of how the Placer system works, using the fairgrounds, where the Eclipse Fest concert series was held, and how individual visitors and visits are tracked.
She said the program could also track recurring events to show if the event is growing every year and visitor trends for each event. She said the program could also show where people are going before and after a specific event.
“That can help with sponsorships and where to do advertisement,” she said.
Gonzalez said the program also tracks visitors’ places of origin.
“This is the one, where if we’re handing out HOT money, is what we really need to look at, because we always ask, is (the event) bringing people in and where are they coming from?” Owens said.
“This will give us a tool, because we’re always concerned when we hand out HOT money, is it really benefitting anything,” the county judge added.
He noted the county typically provides HOT funds for the George Paul Memorial Bull Riding, the Cinco de Mayo and Diez y seis de septiembre event and the Fiesta de Amistad celebration, adding, “It would be nice to be able to justify those funds, or not.”
Gonzalez, in response to a question from County Auditor Matthew Weingardt, said the data is collected from cell phones’ location services feature.
She said one of the drawbacks of the data collection feature is that if a person has the location tracking portion of their phone turned off or if, for instance, a child visiting the Whitehead Museum as part of a school group, isn’t carrying a phone, data for Placer won’t be collected.
“That’s the report that I would like to see about all these events, is where are the people coming from? Is it 90 percent local? Is it 20 percent local? Where are they coming from? Then you can take that and divide it by the number of dollars that were spent and you kind of get an idea of what it’s costing you to attract those people. That’s what I’m interested in,” Nettleton said.
Owens reiterated he would like to see more in-depth reports of the kind Nettleton had asked for on the events the county helped fund with HOT dollars: Cinco de Mayo, the George Paul Memorial Bull riding, the Diez y seis de septiembre and the Fiesta de Amistad events.
Gonzalez said one other drawback of the program is that “it is contained to (data from) the United States.”
“It’s not going to pick up people coming from Mexico, and that’s one thing that hurt us on the eclipse numbers, is because we did see people here from Canada, from Switzerland, Australia, and all of those visitors didn’t get picked up,” she told the court.
Owens asked Gonzalez to bring back the more in-depth reports requested sometime around the start of 2025, because that is when organizations begin asking for HOT dollars.
The writer can be reached at delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
