Coppell Chamber outlines Discover Coppell marketing program, plans to hire hotel liaison

Ellie Braxton, president and CEO of the Coppell Chamber of Commerce, updated the council on Discover Coppell, the chamber-led destination marketing organization funded by the hotel occupancy tax.

Braxton described the program’s structure, channels and performance in 2024 and said the chamber will stop using a telemarketing contractor and hire a staff liaison to focus on weekend room nights for hotels.

The program started in 2021 and uses hotel-occupancy-tax funding to promote day visitors, special events and hotels. Braxton said Belmont Advertising runs programmatic and paid search campaigns and the chamber maintains organic social channels. “We do programmatic advertising,” she told the council, explaining the digital approach used to attract day trippers and event visitors. She said Discover Coppell’s organic social accounts reached roughly 94,000 impressions and received about 9,400 engagements in 2024.

Braxton told the council the chamber contracted Hotel Resources for a year of telemarketing in 2024 at a cost of about $48,000; the contractor booked roughly $60,000 in business but hotel partners reported little benefit. “The hotels did not see a benefit from Hotel Resources,” she said. Hotels asked the chamber instead to provide a staff liaison to engage large local employers and regional event organizers — work that hotel sales teams said they could not do themselves. The chamber’s board voted to hire a staff liaison, initially possibly part time, after the chamber’s new CEO is onboard.

Braxton said Discover Coppell also operates a gap-funding program to subsidize small per-room discounts when an event would otherwise not book a block; hotels must apply and qualify. She reviewed 2024 spending and said the chamber maintains a contingency budget for unexpected opportunities. She told council there are five hotels currently on the advisory council and that at least two new hotels are planned to open soon.

Council members asked whether hotel-occupancy-tax funds could be used to advertise the city as a place to live; Braxton and other speakers said those funds are legally restricted to tourism uses. “This is paid for by the hotel occupancy tax, and the role of the money is supposed to be spent on anything that’s tourism,” Braxton said. Staff later confirmed those limits during discussion.

The chamber said it will continue digital advertising targeting day-trippers while the new staff liaison’s primary metric will be increased weekend heads-and-beds for hotels — more room nights and higher hotel-occupancy-tax receipts. Braxton said the liaison’s work would include proactive outreach tied to regional tournaments and other events to position Coppell hotels as overflow or convenient options.

The council did not take formal action on the report; Braxton thanked council members for their support.