Commissioners Court approves $50,000 to market El Paso at South by Southwest Conference and Festival

El Paso County commissioners unanimously approved $50,000 to send four delegates to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference and Festival in Austin.

The City of El Paso has also committed $50,000. The goal is to promote tourism and economic opportunities in the El Paso area. This is the second year the city and county are partnering up to send a delegation to Austin. In total, 12 people representing El Paso will make the trip to Austin on March 10-15.

“It’s a great opportunity. there’s over 70,000 people from all over the world that come to South by Southwest in Austin. There’s everything from film and business and economic development, art and music. It’s a great location for us to represent our community,” Destination El Paso general manager Bryan Crowe said.

Crowe said the budget for this year will be $118,500.

Here’s a breakdown of the 2018 budget:

County commissioner Andrew Haggerty wondered if the county and city had seen a return on their investment from last year.

“I was a big fan of this last year, I thought it was a great idea,” Haggerty said. “My only question is what metrics are we using to track if this $100,000 – $120,000 investment is reaping any rewards? And did we see any increase from visitation from last year?”

Crowe said it’s difficult to gauge the success of it with metrics.

“Marketing things are a little tricky. There’s not a direct R.O.I. (return on investment) to some of the things that we do. However, we do look for metrics to be able to show engagement. We look at lead generation, we had over 600 leads generated on folks that were interested in business and economic opportunities here in El Paso. We look at the number of people that we interacted with in our booth, which was in the thousands,” Crowe said.

El Paso will have it’s own booth during the four-day trade show. The trade show includes business exhibitions from companies, and cities around the world. El Paso will also rent out 15 pedicabs across Austin, which will be decorated with Visit El Paso logos.

“It’s really early, I think it’s an on-going process. You’re really just trying to get the name recognition out there. It’s important for us to be represented. It’s a world stage,” Crowe said. “Frankly for us, it’s not that far down the road. When you look at other cities and countries that travel a lot farther to participate, at a much greater expense. And I think El Paso belongs on that stage with those other competitive cities.”