April, May, March. The third Fiesta de la Flor will be held earlier than ever in 2017, with dates now set for March 24-25 announced the Corpus Christi Convention and Visitors Bureau recently. The event will remain in North Bayfront Park in downtown Corpus Christi, which this year hosted more than 55,000 Selena fans.

“For the past two years it has been wonderful to see so many people come to Corpus Christi from all over the world to celebrate the life and legacy of our beloved Selena,” said Paulette Kluge, CEO of the Corpus Christi Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We are very excited with the success of this event and we are certain that 2017 will be another memorable year for Fiesta de la Flor.”

Fiesta de la Flor 2017 will come on the heels of spring break, which runs from Friday, March 10 through Sunday, March 19.

This year’s festival brought $15 million into the city during its second celebration of Tejano super-star Selena Quintanilla Perez May 6-7. That’s a conservative figure, according to the CVB, and $2 million more than the festival impact in 2015, its inaugural year.

The $15 million reflects money spent in hotels, restaurants and shopping centers. As for the money raised in ticket sales, half goes to pay for the next event and half to the Selena Foundation, which raises money for scholarships, hospitals and schools.

More than half of the people attending this year’s Fiesta de la Flor were from outside the greater Corpus Christi area, said the CVB. Of the 55,000 attendees, 59 percent were from out of area. Visitors came from at least 25 states and several countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and more.

Hotels reported an 87.2 percent overall occupancy rate city-wide for the weekend. That marked an increase of 19.5 percent for the same weekend in 2015 (NOT the weekend of the first Fiesta de la Flor, which was held April 17-18, the same weekend as the Blue Angels Wings Over South Texas). Hoteliers also enjoyed increased average daily rates of over 29 percent and increased revenue per available room of nearly 53.7 percent over the same weekend in 2015.

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