SpaceX's upcoming Starship launch coincides with South Padre Island's busy spring break season, creating a surge in tourism and hotel bookings.
SpaceX’s third Starship launch could spark a different kind of space race in South Texas among the thousands headed to South Padre Island for spring break and throngs of rocket aficionados hunting for hotel rooms. The commercial space company said this week that Starship could blast off from its Starbase facility near Boca Chica Beach as early as 7 a.m.
Thursday — timing that coincides with a major spring break week, known as “Texas Week,” that’s expected to draw tens of thousands to the region. “We’re forecasting to get pretty close to selling out,” said Daniel Haughan, general manager of Margaritaville Beach Resort, one of South Padre’s largest hotels with 253 rooms and condos. SpaceX’s announcement of the possible launch “obviously helped push those occupancy forecasts even more aggressively, and so we’re just kind of monitoring that right now.” The combination of spring break and Starship is expected to boost South Padre Island’s tourism that was dented by the COVID-19 pandemic but rebounded in 2022 and 2023. Read more: FAA: Starship mishap investigation complete, license still pending “I think in a hospitality sense across the board all over the U.S., we talk about a return to 2019 (numbers) and really a return back to the linear growth that we were seeing leading up to 2019,” Haughan said. “And that’s sort of what we’re expecting at this point.” Haughan predicts the island will be busy but that it won’t be “absolutely jam packed” with every room sold out. “It’s always going to be something that runs at high occupancy, but obviously not to absolute capacity,” he said. “It should be a good time for us.” He’s looking forward to the diverse crowds that the events are sure to draw. “Spring break itself is busy. Add on a rocket launch on top of it, it’s definitely going to be busy,” he said. “It should be a week packed of excitement for sur
Spacex Starship South Padre Island Spring Break Tourism
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