ENID — Enid Convention and Visitors Bureau is hoping members of a large bus tour scheduled to come through Enid Tuesday will take home some positive impressions of the city — and leave some of their money with the local economy.
ECVB staff helped recruit and organize a six-bus, 300-member tour of Enid through Friends International Tours.
ECVB director Marcy Jarrett said the tour members, mostly from Tulsa, Hinton and Oklahoma City, were interested in visiting Enid for “a Christmas-themed shopping trip.”
“The Christmas in the Village at Humphrey Heritage Village was a nice draw for them,” Jarrett said, “and they chose Enid for their holiday excursion trip this year.”
The six tour buses will be split into four groups, visiting several locations in the city during the day Tuesday.
Stops will include home tours and tea in the Waverly Historic District, shopping at Heritage Hills Shopping Center and Willow Plaza, a tour of Bivins Chapel on the NOC Enid campus, lunch downtown at Napoli’s Italian Restaurant, and back to the NOC campus for dinner at the Gantz Center.
Jarrett said the entire six-bus tour group will be together only for lunch and dinner.
She said that could cause some excess traffic near Washington and Randolph around lunchtime. But, she added, it definitely could be worth a little extra traffic to the community when it comes time to figure sales tax revenue.
Jarrett expects the tour group to bring more than $30,000 to Enid, including tour fees, shopping and meals.
“We appreciate the public’s patience and support when we bring large groups like this to town,” Jarrett said. “Let’s show them what a great city we have and what’s going on here in Enid.”
For more information on Enid Convention and Visitors Bureau and events in Enid, call (580) 233-3643, or go to visitenid.org.