Visit Austin
Visit Austin staffers said that, as a marketing bureau, their jobs are to woo clients to book conventions in a music-oriented city with drinks, music and fun. Such expenditures are normal, they said.
The approved budget draws $14.8 million of its $17.1 million total budget from Austin hotel taxes, which are designated for expenditures that bring visitors to Austin.
The rest of Visit Austin’s budget comes from private funding, which it will use to pay its bar tabs from now on, its CEO, Tom Noonan, said in a letter to council members Tuesday. The bureau also will commit to highlighting only local Austin musicians, rather than the likes of Lady Gaga, when its representatives entertain clients, and it will welcome a 2018 performance audit.
Finally, Noonan said, the bureau plans to launch a foundation, funded through private revenue, to focus on workforce development for the music and tourism industries.
Meanwhile, a review of Visit Austin’s annual operations is ongoing and expected to come back for council approval in November. Pool said she expects substantial revisions.
“We’re not done,” she said. “But I needed to let them have their budget.”
The questions regarding Visit Austin operations have come amid a larger debate over Austin’s use of hotel taxes, which total more than $90 million annually. More than 70 percent of them go to the Austin Convention Center and Visit Austin — a slightly lower percentage than in previous years, after the council opted to shift 15 percent of the revenue toward parks and historic preservation. Also contentious is whether the convention center should be expanded.
Some have been skeptical of the convention center and its marketing, and are inclined to look at putting hotel taxes to other things. Others, including Mayor Steve Adler and the hotel industry, have praised Visit Austin as successful in drawing visitors and championed expansion of the convention center.
Council Member Alison Alter said she’d like to see the council learn more about Visit Austin’s everyday operations.
“Improved communication between council and this particular industry would be very valuable, in both directions,” Alter said, “so that we understand each other better and we don’t get to a point of (contention) during the budget.”