SAN ANTONIO – As Visit San Antonio prepares for its annual meeting on Friday, executives for the city's official marketing organization are looking back on 2018 as a strong year for tourism.
"I don't know if I want to say it's the best year ever, but it was a really, really strong year, and the team did a great job," said Michael Woody, Visit San Antonio's vice-president of community relations and development.
Notable highlights include the city hosting the NCAA Men's Final Four basketball tournament and the NAACP's annual convention. Woody said Visit San Antonio was also able to "promote and play off of" the city's 300th anniversary all year.
"So that's been a great opportunity, not only from the business perspective and bringing in conventions with these new and exciting things happening, but also for the leisure traveler to come and experience some of the things, and really see what the last 300 years look like," he said.
Visit San Antonio will unveil new figures Friday on the economic impact of the tourism and hospitality industry. Although Woody wouldn't go into statistics Wednesday, he did say that one out of every seven people employed in San Antonio worked in tourism and hospitality.
"So we're really excited about that," Woody said. "It just really shows how strong and how large our industry is here in San Antonio."
While Woody believes 2019 will be another strong year, he said it will be a challenging year for destinations across the country.
"Just because of booking pace," he said, referring to conventions. "You know, we're not seeing that as rapid as we have in years past. But you know, already we're already exceeding where we thought we would be for bookings. So we're really finding unique ways to get out in front of customers to address that challenge that we've seen."
Some of the meetings already planned for 2019 include the American Football Coaches Association Convention in January, with 8,000 or more expected to attend, and the 2019 Annual July Future Business Leaders Convention, which is estimated to draw 14,000 attendees.