Park board highlights new VisitGalveston website, trade outreach, cruise and sports tourism push

The Park Board of Trustees and Galveston City Council heard a presentation April 16 on VisitGalveston’s marketing work, including a March website refresh, new analytics tools and outreach to travel trade, cruise lines and sports-event organizers.

Park Board tourism director Tony Lyle described the updated site as the organization’s most valuable marketing asset and said team added a 3D drone "canvas" and a multilingual AI concierge to help visitors research trips and convert visits into bookings. "It's our most valuable marketing asset," Lyle said. He also said the board offers free partner listings to tourism-related businesses and maintains webcams that are the site’s most-viewed pages.

The presentation included a new tourism economic-impact dashboard that staff said will display lodging occupancy, ADR (average daily rate), RevPAR and cruise calendars. "If you wanna look at that dashboard, it's changed to blue. It's in the about us section of the website, and it's called tourism economic impact," Lyle said. He said 2024 metrics should be added in four to six weeks.

Brian (director of sales and services) described expanded travel-trade outreach begun in earnest in 2024 and a new full-time travel-trade position. "We have thousands of [travel-trade] contacts in our pipeline that we're just hammering, on a daily basis to inform them about Galveston," he said. He described recent site visits by Brand USA, U.K. product managers and efforts to bid to host the Go West Summit in Galveston in 2027.

On cruise, staff said they have hosted Carnival and MSC representatives, participated in Cruise360 and SeaTrade industry events and performed ship inspections. Those efforts aim to increase pre‑ and post‑cruise stays in Galveston.

Park Board staff also reported growth in sports tourism after creating a full‑time sales position for the sector. Staff said hotel room nights tied to sports groups grew from about 5,700 in 2016 to more than 29,000 last fiscal year, and that since January the sports sales lead has logged over 400 prospecting activities. Staff reported six bookings since January representing about 8,000 room nights and an estimated 25,000 visitors generating roughly $6,000,000 in indirect spending.

Trustees and council members asked for more detail on the new data tools, frequency of reports and how the marketing work aligns with residents' needs. Mayor Brown and council members emphasized that projects should demonstrate benefits for people who live and work on Galveston Island, not only visitors.

Staff said many of the dashboard metrics are available online and that officials can produce more frequent summaries for council and business partners. "We do track those and I do like to present on those," Kimberly (park board CEO) said of the economic indicators. The board said it will continue to refine reporting and work with city staff to present capital and special-project plans in advance of budget votes.

Looking ahead, staff listed priorities including continued travel-trade development, cruise partnership work with the Port of Galveston and further sports-market growth. Council members asked staff to ensure the marketing work is coordinated with broader city priorities and to provide advance notice of major data or campaign findings so local businesses can prepare for weekend demand surges.

Ending: Park board and city officials agreed to continue coordination. Staff said updated 2024 dashboard metrics would be published within weeks and that VisitGalveston would make its partner newsletter and data products available to council and local businesses.