The City of Roswell recently received the New Mexico Hospitality Association’s Top HAT award for Outstanding Event, recognizing this summer’s UFO Festival marking the 75th anniversary of the Roswell Incident.
The Nov. 10 Top HAT (Hospitality and Tourism) Awards Gala in Albuquerque celebrated those who have performed exceptional work to elevate the travel, tourism and lodging industries in New Mexico.
Roswell’s award-winning UFO Festival held on the Fourth of July weekend was centered on, as it is annually, the July 1947 incident that many believe involved a UFO, with one or more alien visitors on board, crashing on a ranch in the Roswell area. The 2022 festival was produced by the city’s Public Affairs Department, with collaboration from advertising firm 3 Advertising, and featured a multitude of activities and offerings for visitors who come from across the country and around the world each year. This year’s festival made an estimated $2.19 million economic impact on Roswell.
The judging panel for this year’s Top HAT awards was composed of tourism and hospitality professionals from Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma. Roswell’s UFO Festival shared the top spot for Outstanding Event with Visit Albuquerque’s USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships. The finalists for the category, finishing behind Roswell and Albuquerque, also included events from Santa Fe, Bernalillo and Rio Rancho.
The City of Roswell was also a finalist this year in the Best Digital Campaign category for the work of its Public Affairs Department related to the UFO Festival. That category was won this year by campaigns from Red River and Taos. Roswell took top honors in that category in 2019 for its “Roswell Tourism: Believe” campaign.
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