Many people may come to College Station for Texas A&M University, but in addition to the campus, they’ll discover a thriving community. From events to shopping, dining, and drinking hot spots, the city’s new tourism division, Visit College Station, is making these and other opportunities known.
Visit College Station’s primary purpose is to sell College Station to visitors from out of town, whether they be vacationing families, businesspersons, or sports fans, says Kindra Fry, a marketing manager with Visit College Station. Visit College Station promotes community-created happenings or those it organizes itself. “The gamut of events is all over the place,” Fry says.
According to events coordinator Kendra Davis, happenings that both locals and visitors can look forward to include a farmers and artisan market called Home Grown at Northgate on Apr. 11; Dine Around at Century Square on on May 15, where local restaurants and caterers will offer small bites; and on July 3, Freedom Celebration will take place at Wolf Pen Creek in honor of Independence Day. Visit College Station recently hosted events such as Christmas in College Station — featuring two artisan markets and a Christmas movie night — and the annual Aggieland Invitational, a girls’ high school basketball tournament in December that has attracted competitors from other states and countries to College Station, according to Fry.
Visit College Station’s goal is to fuel the local economy by making it a city that out-of-towners want to visit and stick around once they do, and a key part of their strategy is promoting these events.
“We’re trying to get them to add on different things to their stays, so that they’ll stay longer and spend more time in our community,” Fry says. The tourism division has a strong presence on social media to help accomplish this. If there’s a new business in town, if people are gathering for any reason, chances are Fry and her team has blasted it out to the community on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The website features information about hundreds of restaurants, shops, event venues, museums, and art galleries so that even locals can scroll through and discover a new hidden gem.
Visit College Station previously partnered with the city of Bryan under the name Experience BCS before each city formed their own separate entities in Aug. 2020. Fry says that Bryan and College Station are still one community, however. “We help each other, and we continue to collaborate on lots of projects,” she says.
“We try to market the city of College Station as a destination,” Fry says. “Stay in our hotels, eat in our restaurants, shop in our shops, visit our attractions … and come back again.”
To find out more, visit visit.cstx.gov.