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Despite Texas A&M's grueling four-overtime football loss to Auburn over the weekend, don't expect that to put a damper on hotel stays in the Bryan-College Station area for this Saturday's home finale against the University of Texas.
Many hotels and short-term rentals are nearly sold out for the return of the Lone Star Showdown, said Jeremiah Cook, assistant director of tourism for the city of College Station.
"Typically, that's normal for football games, but this week we're seeing it a bit more," he said. "In general, a week and a half out from a football game, especially an SEC one, there's going to be limited availability."
Excitement is palpable for the upcoming game, which will determine who advances to the Southeastern Conference title game the following week, and a record 30,000 tickets were pulled a week ago for students with sports passes. College Station officials said the city broke its previous hotel records in October as nearly 100,000 fans attended both the Missouri and LSU games at Kyle Field. According to city officials, the Missouri game brought $2.1 million to the city in hotel revenue while the LSU game brought $3.2 million.
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"[The UT game] is a marquee event, and we knew in the beginning of the season that this was going to drive a lot of economic impact with the community," Cook said. "We'll see what happens this weekend that will be determining the SEC championship game. It is growing in lore right as it gets closer, and I think it's really exciting."
The 2024 Aggie football season started out with plenty of excitement as well with new head coach Mike Elko and Notre Dame coming to town, bringing many tourists to the city. Cook said it can be hard to get people to visit the city during Labor Day weekend, but that weekend saw $3.6 million in hotel revenues.
"[Even after the Notre Dame loss], people still wanted to invest in coming to see the Aggies because it's something that's deeper than just enjoying something. It's a part of who we are and it's a passion," Cook said. "If you look at the economy as a whole, you see low points affecting the hotel economy, but you don't see them affecting it during those football weekends."
The tourism department expects many out-of-town Longhorn fans to visit. Due to the rival schools last playing each other in 2011, Cook said they're hoping UT fans will stay a couple days to shop around and visit the new locations in town.
"The opposing fans have not had a chance to explore everything that our area has undergone for 13 years," he said. "This is an opportunity to come back and see everything that's new in College Station. Just from a hotel economy standpoint, we've almost doubled in hotel rooms since the last time these games played out. It's just a completely different world than it was maybe 13 years ago."
Due to the city council not renewing the paid parking pilot program, College Station will not make any revenue on parking but officials will continue to monitor the city to ensure people are parking safely and legally, Cook said.
"Transportation communications between Bryan, College Station and Texas A&M is a well-oiled machine at this point," he said. "It's a modern miracle that 100,000-plus people get in and out of that stadium and get home safely seven weekends a year, two weekends over the summer. ... This town knows how to get people in and out efficiently and safely."
In recent years, Thanksgiving has been quieter for the city due to college students leaving for the holiday. With the UT game coming two days after Thanksgiving, there's a possibility of the city filling that gap, Cook said.
"I was talking with someone who was organizing an event on Thanksgiving that said there were more out-of-town guests attending that Thanksgiving event than normal," he said. "Does that mean more people are coming in early for the game? Or does it mean that this time residents decided to not go out of town and maybe we're having more family visit loved ones here instead of Dallas, for example? We don't really know, and won't know until next year when the game happens in Austin."
October was the best month of hotel revenue that the city has ever seen, Cook said, and broke records for all months so far. Whether or not November tops October is up in the air, but possible.
"All of our data will come in mid-December. That's when we'll get the November numbers and be able to piece together what it all looks like," he said. "People are obviously extremely excited for their team, but the real question is, 'Can those two weekends pull up a month that is good but has always struggled a bit because of the holidays?'"
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