Visit Houston takes trade out to the ball game

Visit Houston hosted an evening for travel trade partners at the Rogers Centre last Friday, as the visiting Houston Astros paid a visit to the Toronto Blue Jays.

In the end, the Jays would fall 5-3 to the visiting Astros that night, before bouncing back and winning the next two games in the series.

The city’s strong sports scene (in addition to the Astros, Houston is also home to the Rockets and Texans of the NBA and NFL respectively) will get an even bigger boost when Super Bowl LI comes to Houston’s NRG Centre on Feb. 5, which has resulted in a boom of new hotel rooms ahead of the big game. According to Rosalyn Hunter, director of public relations and communications for VoX International (which represents both Texas Tourism and Visit Houston in Canada), Visit Houston has partnered with itravel2000 this summer for the Great City Getaways program, highlighting travel opportunities in urban centres.

Carina Boukary-Mory, account manager for Visit Houston, told PAX that among those tourism draws are the city’s strong culinary scene and museum district, along with family draws such as Space Center Houston, exploring the city’s historic ties to NASA.

Only a three hour flight from Toronto, Houston continues to draw Canadians mostly from Ontario and Quebec while visitors from Western Canada also make up a sizable portion of the market, Boukary-Mory said.

More information can be found at www.visithoustontexas.com.