Boerne advisory board reviews visitor data and shifts reporting to Placer analytics

The Visibly Advisory Board in Boerne spent most of its meeting on visitor analytics, advertising results and a planned change in reporting platforms.

Jeanette, a long-serving staff presenter, told the board the destination outperformed its fair-market-share benchmark in the quarter — “we did 8.57%, which means we did better than we should've,” she said — and reviewed comparative average daily rate and occupancy figures. Jeanette also noted annual revenue tracked by Smith Travel Research and that hotel-room counts across the competitive set change percent calculations.

Staff announced a transition from the current data-cloud reporting to a platform called Placer, which the city already uses. “We are going to transition to a program called Placer,” staff said, and explained the platform will change how some capabilities are presented; for example, advertising cannot be executed through Placer’s dashboard, though staff said the switch will yield cost savings and more detailed flow analytics.

Board members and business owners pressed staff on data-collection methods. One business representative said their in-venue clicker counts showed more than 700 customers on a given day but that the vendor output did not reflect that traffic; staff said they would follow up with the vendor to reconcile the discrepancy. A board member called the phone-based tracking “super creepy,” reflecting privacy concerns among some members.

Staff also reviewed recent advertising and social campaigns, saying a video campaign attributed 616 visits and produced what the presenter characterized as roughly $1,000 in incremental visitor expenditures (staff noted that the dollar estimate is model-based and includes assumptions about average spend). Presenters said shifting from search to the Google Display Network and using targeted social placements has produced low cost-per-click and higher-than-average click-through rates.

The board asked staff to add clearer hot-tax collection slides going forward and requested follow-up reporting on vendor reconciliation for event counts and on how Placer will present visitor flow across neighboring destinations such as Fredericksburg.

The board adjourned at 5:02 p.m.