|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
HARLINGEN — After 14 years of waiting, Riofest is back on the calendar.
The popular festival will be making a comeback Nov. 11-12 at the Harlingen Baseball Park and nearby Lon C. Hill Park.
“This is Harlingen’s signature event that has not happened in a little bit of time, actually since 2008,” said Cassandra Consiglio, director of Visit Harlingen. “The event will be a two-day, paid entrance event with a carnival and more exciting things that we’re going to reveal later on.
“But this is really a labor of love for the whole of the City of Harlingen and we really wanted to create a signature event that will attract people from all over the Valley, all over the state, to see great musicians, have great food and enjoy the carnival and really bring the community together,” she added.
Riofest was just one of a half-dozen major city events announced at a press conference Thursday at the Hilton Garden Inn next to the Harlingen Convention Center.
Others include Margarita Fest this Saturday at Lon C. Hill Destination Park, Blues on the Hill on June 11, Freedom Fest one July 2, the Harlingen Marathon on Feb. 5 and Lighting of the Arroyo on Dec. 1.
“Visit Harlingen has really elevated what we’re doing with promoting the City of Harlingen,” said Mayor Chris Boswell. “I’m very, very proud of the work our team is doing to encourage people to come to our community, and we are so grateful to the partnership we have with the Harlingen Chamber of Commerce and all the staff there, everything they do to also help promote our great city.”
Consiglio said the city’s hotels have reached a 76-percent occupancy rate, a strong indicator of the city’s tourism success.
Steven Villarreal, director of sales and marketing for the Harlingen Convention Center, expanded on that tourism thread, saying the attached Hilton Garden Inn was in the top five percent of all the hotels in the country when it came to overall service scores. “Not sure you knew that,” Villareal told the crowd.
“We sit in a very privileged area of the entire South Texas region. Why? It’s because this Harlingen Convention Center serves thousands and thousands of people that have been coming in through our doors since we opened this convention center,” he said.
“So it is amazing to know that this will attract all these new associations, new sorority groups, special events, weddings, so many things that are going to be happening in our city because of the way our convention center and the Hilton Garden convention center strategize and put together,” he added.
Nicolas Mirman, director of air service and business development at Valley International Airport, also noted the role his facility plays in tourism in Harlingen.
“For the first time in 14 years we’re going to exceed 40,000 enplanements in a month which is huge, the first time it has happened since 2008,” Mirman said.
