Fort Worth tourism has been gradually emerging from its COVID-19-induced slumber, and Visit Fort Worth’s given a boost during the World Series, running one of its “Discover the Modern West” spots during the World Series, being held last week and this week at Globe Life Field in Arlington. Visit Fort Worth rolled out the Modern West branding at its annual meeting in February, pretty close to the last time things were robust in the city. The World Series spot is running only in DFW, top market for weekend stays to Fort Worth. Bob Jameson, CEO of Visit Fort Worth, sat down Monday for a virtual Q&A with Fort Worth Inc.
The “leisure transient traveler”
Jameson: “These are the weekend getaways, the people that are not here for a meeting. They want to get out of the house. Those are the folks who are taking the time to come see us.”
Fort Worth hotel occupancy today
Jameson: “We’re in the low 40s citywide, with much stronger occupancy on Friday and Saturday” and much lower weekdays. The Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel sold out Friday from visitors in town for the Oklahoma-TCU game. The Sooners also stayed downtown, a boost.
Trajectory
Jameson: “It’s been a very gradual climb, and it’s been influenced by different events. Our strongest week-long occupancies have been when the Charles Schwab took place, when Kenneth Copeland Ministries was in town, when TCU had its move-in ‘week,’ as opposed to weekends. That spread out activity over several days, which helped. The home TCU games have all provided a lift. Labor Day weekend, a holiday weekend, made that week a healthier one. If you would reference a normal week, we see those gradually growing. But we get those smallish peaks.”
Coming up this fall
Jameson: “We’re watching for a couple of things. We’re just starting to hear about very simple business meetings taking place in the hotels. Nothing at the Convention Center, but smaller things that can be easily designed to meet safety requirements. Those are just starting to take place at the hotels. So we’re watching to see if that gets some traction. That becomes another segment of the traveling public that has been missing for the last seven months. If it can be done once safely, it can be done again safely. We’re highlighting some of these events that have taken place to show we have the capacity to hold events. The holidays, November and December are not particularly strong months for an occupancy standpoint. We’ll see what the impact of that is. We’re really keeping an eye on what travel behavior looks like after the New Year.”
Rodeo
Jameson: “The National Finals Rodeo will be in Arlington for 10 days during December. That will feel like 2019 again for those 10 days. That is a significant event. We’ll have a large number of people staying downtown and throughout the city, and we’ll have an active Stockyards. They’ve got 16,000 contracted room nights (in the region). Then they have people that are making their own reservations independently. The Convention Center has the Cowboy Christmas (being held concurrently with the National Finals Rodeo.), one of a series of Christmas showcases. They’re expecting several thousand a day visiting each of those.”
Baseball
Jameson: “We’ve gotten a little bit of that. The teams have been staying in Irving at the Four Seasons, so we haven’t seen any of that activity. With the limitation on the audience size, that has lessened the impact we may have experienced in Fort Worth, to the point where it would be more anecdotal than anything you could account.”
Getting the word out
Jameson: “We were able, with the support of the mayor’s promotional fund in June, to advertise on CBS multiple times in multiple markets during the Schwab Challenge. That was our first attempt to market Fort Worth as a destination after March, trading on the fact that viewership was going to be high. We had an opportunity to get in there much cheaper. Our focus was statewide.We wanted to start sending messages in Houston, in Austin, in San Antonio. Those are the markets we see present here in town. Those are the folks that traveling.”
Helping new hotels opening soon
Jameson: “We certainly are highlighting the fact that they were new hotels in our inventory, both in leisure travel advertising and in the communications we’re sending to the meeting planning clients. And drawing attention to the fact we have new inventory. It gives people that many more opportunities.”
What’s up with the 2021 Visit Fort Worth annual meeting Feb. 5?
Jameson: “We’re still working on what that plan will be. Feb. 5. There is a chance it could be in person, there’s a chance it could be virtual. We’re like everyone one of our customers. We’re trying to figure out what we can and cannot do. We're going to make an announcement on that shortly."