Discover Odessa reports higher hotel occupancy, highlights sports recruitment and visitor snapshot

Discover Odessa staff presented the city’s quarterly tourism and events report to the Odessa City Council on Jan. 28, 2025, covering October through December 2024 and showing higher hotel occupancy and several ongoing recruitment efforts for sports events.

The report, delivered by Laura, a Discover Odessa staff member, said the market includes 54 lodging properties with just under 4,000 rooms and that observed visitor devices — defined in the presentation as devices located within 50 miles outside city limits — represented about 36% of the devices observed that quarter. “On a daily basis... a visitor is anyone within 50 miles outside the city limits,” Laura said, and “we had about 36% of them that were considered visitors.” She also highlighted that “our total hotel occupancy during that quarter was up 9%.”

The office broke down event economic impact by month and by category (meetings, special events and sports). Laura pointed to a sports-event recruitment program (SERP) the office runs to support local sporting events, saying the program lists events supported, amounts granted and remaining balances; specific grant totals were shown in the handout but not read aloud in full at the meeting. She described routine assistance Discover Odessa provides to events: registration support, venue and vendor connections, and direct payments for event expenses where appropriate.

Laura said staff are building a photo library of local images to use in marketing instead of relying on stock photography, and she outlined digital and print advertising channels and social media growth tracked in the quarterly packet. She also noted several events already scheduled into 2026 and 2027 and invited council members to sign up for the organization’s insider e‑newsletter.

Looking ahead, Discover Odessa is planning two training courses from the Texas Hotel & Lodging Association, one on human trafficking and one on the hotel labor market, offered in conjunction with Visit Midland. Laura said the human‑trafficking training is required for hotel partners and that the seminar series has been offered jointly for three years to accommodate hotel owners with properties in both cities.

Council members asked clarifying questions about the “total economic impact” metric and whether short‑term rentals such as Airbnbs are counted in the room‑night figures. Laura said the office is not yet tracking short‑term rentals comprehensively but has discussed tools (she named Granicus) that could identify additional short‑term units and potential room nights; she confirmed Discover Odessa tracks hotel nights per event and that room nights are used when considering HOT (hotel occupancy tax) fund allocations. The presentation concluded with staff invitations for one‑on‑one follow‑up.

The city packet provided more detailed tables and charts than the verbal summary; Discover Odessa staff left time for council questions and said they will provide follow‑up numbers on request.