As President & CEO of Visit San Antonio, Casandra Matej is a leading figure in San Antonio’s $13.6 billion hospitality industry. Casandra’s 21+ years of tourism experience have guided Visit San Antonio in achieving record highs in convention sales, media coverage and traffic to visitsanantonio.com. This is in great part due to her ability to identify what resonates with consumers as well as her strategic effort to stay at the forefront of industry trends. 

Currently, Casandra is spearheading the transition of the bureau from a department of the City of San Antonio to a 501(c)6, a public-private partnership. She is at the helm of a team of public and private sector leaders instituting new platforms for human resources, operations, membership and partnership opportunities as well as finances. A substantial portion of this process has been negotiating by-laws, the management agreement and the structure of the new board of directors. Throughout this process, she is also working diligently to update staff, partners and civic leaders.

Uniting San Antonio’s hospitality is a significant part of Casandra’s philosophy. To achieve this, Visit San Antonio initiated San Antonio’s Certified Tourism Ambassador (CTA) Program which has grown to become one of the largest in the country with over 2,000 CTAs dedicated to providing exceptional visitor experiences.

Serving on councils and committees that enhance the tourism industry and her community are important to Casandra. She is currently on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Travel Association, the Texas Travel Industry Association, on the executive committee of Destinations International of which she has also been certified as a Destination Marketing Executive. She is also in the 2017 Class of the Texas Lyceum.

Locally, she is a recipient of the 2015 San Antonio Business Journal’s Women in Leadership Award and is involved with the Valero Alamo Bowl; the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Development Council and serves on the Board of Directors for Boysville, Inc. 

Casandra Matej is an enthusiastic Texas Longhorn who holds a Bachelor of Science in Speech Communications with a concentration in Organizational Communications from the University of Texas at Austin. She and her husband, Chris, are proud parents to John (6) and Ellie Mae (8), and step-daughters, Madison (19) and Carlie (16). In her spare time, Matej enjoys golf, boating, beach vacations with her family.