Visit Corpus Christi using hotel fee to boost tourism marketing

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Since 2022, the Tourism Public Improvement District, or TPID, has been providing Visit Corpus Christi with additional funding to market the city as a destination for visitors of all kinds. 

The program adds a 2 percent fee to hotel stays at properties with 40 rooms or more within the city limits. Those funds can only be used for marketing and promotional efforts and are managed by Visit Corpus Christi.

For Visit Corpus Christi CEO Brook Kaufman, the area’s beaches remain the biggest attraction.

“The beach is absolutely the backbone to me, for Corpus Christi,” Kaufman said. “So it’s the thing that we have. It’s the reason people come. We are so lucky it’s a world class asset for us, and I see opportunities to drive new visitation through development.”

But Kaufman said the organization is also looking beyond the shoreline.

“So whether that’s expansion and investment in the Hilliard Center, youth sports facilities, we’ve got air service,” Kaufman said. “There’s so many things that can help drive visitation to us and continue to drive quality of life.”

She added that while statewide tourism numbers are slightly down, Corpus Christi continues to see strong demand during peak times.

“We saw a very robust Fourth of July. We saw a very robust Labor Day, and we continue to be in the space of marketing so that we can continue to drive visitors here,” Kaufman said.

City leaders believe the additional funding will also help support film, sports and music projects that bring more visitors, and their wallets, into the city.

“With the beach, with the ranches around us, with downtown, with the south side, and with our industry those looks can apply to TV shows and movies,” Councilman Mark Scott said. “That’s why I hope we can use our Type B money, leverage it with TPID money that Visit Corpus Christi is doing, and try to create an incentive for these projects.”

Scott also sees a bigger-picture benefit from the increased marketing, especially with Frontier Airlines twice-a-day nonstop flights to and from Denver being debuted at Corpus Christi International Airport in mid-October. 

“You know they’re gonna see ads ‘had enough, come to the beach,’ right? Come to Corpus Christi, Texas,” Scott said. “Think about that. They may have never been to Corpus. They come down here and they’re at the beach, they’re playing tennis and golf while there’s four feet of snow up in the Colorado Rockies. They’re gonna go, ‘hey maybe we need to look at this.’ How many people come back? How many people buy second homes? How many people tell their friends about these opportunities? And I do think Visit Corpus Christi is driving all of this.”