Paula White

By now, many of you know that the chamber’s former convention and visitors’ bureau director, David Cooksey, is now an “inside the Beltway” politico in Washington, D.C., working on the presidential bid of a candidate from Colorado. The chamber hired him a year ago while he was serving as marketing director of the San Antonio CVB. Under David’s leadership, we were able to accomplish much and we are very thankful for all he did for our chamber and visitor center and our community. He was able to build coalitions, work with many tourism stakeholders through the chamber’s tourism council, further develop the CVB Web site and complete a successful rebranding campaign. While he enjoyed and came to love Boerne, David really felt the call to follow his dream of working in politics. Everyone at the chamber wishes him every success in his new endeavor.

Encouraging visitors to experience Boerne has been a role of this Chamber for many years. While primarily funded by Texas’ hotel-motel tax, a significant portion of CVB financing comes from the chamber. By contrast, in large cities, such as San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, and even San Antonio, the management of the convention centers is performed by departments within the big city governments.

We have already begun a search to find an experienced tourism director for Boerne’s CVB. We believe it is important to Boerne’s future that we hire a professional, a builder of coalitions, who has solid tourism experience and can show quantifiable results from that experience. We are looking for an expert who can demonstrate the ability to bring tourists and appropriate events to Boerne. We will hire a leader who will implement bright ideas and big dreams right here to benefit Boerne’s quality of life. Rest assured that the progress we have made to develop Boerne’s tourism product will continue and be better than ever. Solid groundwork has been laid to help meet our goal to continue to build a strong economy for Boerne, and promoting tourism plays a major role in that plan.