USBC’s impact at midway point

we’ve reache organizers expect 60-thousand bowlers and family members to travel here this spring and summer. abc-7’s darren hunt is live with a look at some big numbers … darren. rick and estela, the economic impact of this event is projected to be in the 75 to 100 million dollar range … last weekend marked the halfway point and here are some numbers we were able to gather today. more than 18- thousand bowlers have come through el paso already … and another 18- thousand are expected to come to town through mid- july. u-s-b-c officials project more visitors during the final two months since kids will be out of school … in march last year, hotel occupancy of el paso’s more than nine thousand rooms was at 70 percent … in march of this year, that number jumped five percent. hotel occupancy tax numbers are also up three percent over the first three months of last year. inside the convention center, which has been turned into a 62-lane bowling alley, more than 154-thousand games have already been bowled by competitors … and for those of you keeping track, nearly a half a million strikes and better than 600- thousand spares have been scored, with a total pinfall in excess of 25 million. rick lafleur, president of the el paso motel-hotel association and g-m of the airport wyndam, said he wishes there was a tournament like this here every year. “we’re really starting to fee things now, things are really getting in place and they said the middle two months were going to be the big months, so i’m excited to see what the numbers are going to be like after april … After the relatively slow start we had to the year january and february were down, march started turning things around and i’m sure once we see the april numbers we’re going to see a huge increase.” coming up at six, we’ll talk more about the economic impact at the midway point … and i’ll tell you why some el paso apartment complexes are also seeing the impact that hotels in the area are seeing. rick and estela. it is official. a