City of College Station Blog

What’s Up College Station Archive

Grace Hallowell:

What’s up College Station? I’m Grace Hallowell, and today I’m joined with Jeremiah Cook from Visit College Station, our tourism manager. Hi Jeremiah.

Jeremiah Cook:

Hey, how’s it going?

Grace Hallowell:

It is going well. Some congratulations are in order for you guys over at Visit College Station. You recently were designated, well, College Station as a city was designated a top travel destination from TripAdvisor, which is a big deal.

Jeremiah Cook:

For sure. We’re super excited about that. It’s a testament to a lot of hard work from a lot of our community partners as well as us here at the city and Visit College Station. To be second on a list that includes national parks and beaches across the country, it’s a huge win for us and we’re super proud of everybody that’s come together to make that happen.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, it is a huge deal. I know our residents here who are familiar with the show that are watching now, I know they love College Station, but we want our visitors to love College Station as well. And as we go into the summer season for our area, you would typically think, oh, it’s the slow season, but that is not the case. There’s always something going on.

Jeremiah Cook:

Yeah, that’s something that we really focus on. We understand that our job is to drive economic impact. We want visitors here continuing to grow our local economy. And when we talk about that, we understand that students leave twice a year. And so when 70,000 students are in, they’re eating at our restaurants, they’re going to our retail, they’re doing all of those things. But when they leave in December and when they leave for summer, we want to try to bring visitors in specifically during those times to ensure that we are driving economic growth. And that’s something that’s happening this summer is why we were on the TripAdvisor list.

Grace Hallowell:

Exactly. And we have exciting events coming up in June in a few weeks here, so let’s talk a little bit about those.

Jeremiah Cook:

So obviously kicking it off, right, with the MexTour soccer match happening at Kyle Field. We’re talking about two global powerhouses in Mexico versus Brazil and we’re talking about 60, 70,000 people. So really excited about that, about the opportunity to have those fans come into College Station, maybe for the first time and experience all we have here.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, it is an exciting, I know, I’m excited for it. Soccer is a big deal, for me anyway, or football. And then George Strait, his only Texas stop is right here in Aggieland.

Jeremiah Cook:

That’s right. And looking to be over a hundred thousand people in Kyle Field. I know it’s going to be rocking and something that we’ve been looking forward to for a really long time. Anytime that we can activate that large of a space, it’s going to be a huge community impact for us here in College Station.

Grace Hallowell:

Right. And it was recently National Travel and Tourism Week. So you have some facts there that back why College Station is such a great place to visit.

Jeremiah Cook:

For sure. So the state came out with their new numbers, they said that the estimate is that visitors spent $433 million in College Station last year, which that is a wild number. It’s hard for me to even fathom, but you think about what would happen to our local economy if next year $430 million disappeared? We would have restaurants closing, we would have hotels closing, we’d have retail closing. So you understand that tourism really is a powerhouse and it’s something that we understand that sometimes it gets a bad rap, right? You say, “I don’t want to sit in more traffic,” or “My favorite restaurant has a line this weekend because there’s too many tournaments out at Veterans Park.”

But then we understand that sometimes that is the trade off that comes when we are talking about bringing lots of money into our community. And so what we want to do is make sure that those two things are happening in conjunction, that there’s a great quality of life here for residents and that visitors are getting to experience everything that we love about College Station. The other number the state came out with was that there was 169 million in earnings for people that live here in our area because of tourists coming in last year. So that’s really huge for us because when we talk about tourists, we talk about coming in and going to Kyle Field or maybe going to Century Square, but this is talking about who’s putting food on the table. That’s what we’re passionate about, is who’s putting food on the table at home because of these tourists that have come to town.

Grace Hallowell:

Yes, I know I grew up in a tourist town up north and one of my favorite things was whenever it would be a busy weekend, there would be something going on was showing the new people who may have never been there, why it’s such a great place to visit. And I know our College Station residents are the same way because we love Aggieland and we want everybody to experience why we love Aggieland.

Jeremiah Cook:

For sure. And I think that’s really important. Whenever you read anything about tourism right now, it’s that tourists are looking for authentic experiences. They want to know, not maybe what TripAdvisor says is the number one thing to do in town, but they want to know what is it that a resident would do, what is it that’s maybe a hidden gem? And I think one way that residents can get involved is that we need volunteers. We need a lot of volunteers for these events happening this summer. Towards the end of July, we’re bringing in a track and field event with 9,000 athletes over nine days, which is going to be wild. But we need people to help us volunteer. So anybody that’s interested in volunteering can go to visit.cstx.gov. We need as many volunteers we can get to do exactly what you were talking about, welcome people in, tell them about what you love about the town, and really just be the red carpet that rolls out as people are coming here from all over the country.

Grace Hallowell:

Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Jeremiah.

Jeremiah Cook:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Grace Hallowell:

And that’s what’s up.