Houston becoming one of top destinations for visitors

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- The Bayou City is once again reinventing itself. Long seen as a place that few visited the old Houston image is being blown away, Houston now ranks as one of the top five places to visit in the nation. But you may not realize who's filling all the rooms.

Houston saw 13 million travelers last year, up 22 percent from the previous year. The question isn't why, but rather, where are all those people going to stay?

When Oprah comes to town, she is going to draw a crowd. No surprise thousands of people filled the Toyota Center this weekend to hear her advice. The surprise is the travelers found a place to stay.

The city is seeing a huge increase in visitors and most of them are like Lauren Parsons, who is in town on business, says it can be hard to find a hotel.

"A lot of my clients are not only based here but nationally it makes sense to meet here," said Parsons. "We book tend to book things quite in advance and it is often busy."

Clearly more visitors is great news. Guests spent $16 billion in the Bayou City in 2013. The city saw a 14 percent jump in hotel accommodations spending. Sixty-percent of the travelers are in Houston on business. Jeff Fuller with Royal Sonesta has an entire team of people making sure that figure keeps growing.

"I have over 11 managers who go after every kind of market you can think of, from associations to corporate to social to fraternal and we go after them with the thought process that we are the perfect place for them to meet in," said Fuller.

The spike in visitors is not going unnoticed. Eight new hotels are planned for downtown Houston, including the city's second convention center hotel, a 1,000 room Marriott. Even the West side is sprouting up more hotels too.

"There really have been major land grabs over the past few years in the West Houston area, primarily because that's where the available land is to develop," said Jason Purifoy of Wyndham Hotels.

If you want to stay in a Houston hotel, and can find a room, the price averages $101 dollars a night, that's actually about $40 less than the national average.