COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) -Things are looking up for Bryan-College Station hotels according to an economic indicators report created by the Texas A&M Private Enterprise Research Center (PERC).
The September 2022 edition from PERC showed the impacts COVID-19 caused on the hotel business. For example, the revenues for the last three months of 2021 exceeded revenues for the same months in 2019. Six months into 2022, the revenues were 97% of the revenues in 2019. In PERC’s most recent month of data, revenues in June 2022 were 98% of the revenues in June 2019. This means hotels are surpassing their pre-pandemic levels.
Greg Stafford, General Manager of the Texas A&M Hotel and Conference Center, said he saw first hand how deeply COVID-19 hit the tourism industry.
“You know, with the very limited amount of people in games it was just really hard,” said Stafford. “That’s one of our busiest times of the year so that was really when we first realized how much we were hit.”
Stafford told KBTX he saw things take a turn in the right direction last football season.
“I mean last year you could see tourism go back to usual. Which is great for us and all of the other communities in Bryan-College Station,” Stafford said. “Seeing everyone come back to Aggieland not only in the fall, but in the Spring too. On top of all of the conferences we held is just amazing.”
Stafford said he wasn’t shocked when he read through the PERC report that came out on Sept. 15.
“We love where were at. We love that were beyond COVID-19 at this point, ” said Stafford. “Its been great to see tourism booming.”
Dennis Jansen, Director of Texas A&M’s PERC, said the pattern of very busy months in the fall is not a coincidence. Its clear in the PERC report data that special events drive tourism in Brazos County.
“In April of 2020, the average revenue per room was $331,” said Jansen. “Last October though, monthly revenues reached almost $3,000. That’s the highest since October of 2016. You can listen to these numbers and think of what events are in those time periods here in College Station.”
Jansen told KBTX its hard to predict 2022′s full forecast of data but he thinks hotels will be in even better shape than last year.
“It depends on what happens with the rest of the economy, but it appears to me that the hotel industry is going to do really well this fall,” Jansen said.
For the full report by PERC and sponsored by Brazos Valley Economic Corporation, click here.
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