AUSTIN (KXAN) – From South by Southwest, NASCAR at the Circuit of The Americas, the Texas Relays and the Country Music Awards, Austin is packed with back to back events.

Visit Austin’s Communication Director Wesley Lucas said it is one of the busiest times of the year.

“We’ve got Kite Fest, the CMT Music Awards, the US Women’s National Team will be here playing Ireland at Q2 Stadium. We have Moto GP, the Texas Relays,” Lucas said.

With all of those events, comes a boost to the local leisure and hospitality industry.

“We’re really fortunate to have such a strong tourism community that not only supports local businesses, but our local musicians, our heritage, our history,” Lucas said.

How big of a growth has it been?

Amber Warne is the Director of Upskilling and Advancement at Workforce Solutions Capital Area.

She said the leisure and hospitality industry had the greatest regional job growth over the past year.

“The Austin metros leisure and hospitality industry grew 1,300 jobs from January to February. So this makes up about half of all jobs added since last month,” Warne said. “Since last year, the leisure and hospitality industry added 13,400 jobs, which is a 13.4% growth.”

Warne said as of April 2022, the industry had already regained all of the previous jobs lost from the pandemic.

“They’re just continuing to grow and see that job demand,” Warne said.

What are restaurants seeing?

Pascale Massad experienced that growth firsthand. She’s a manager and server at the Green Mesquite off of South Lamar.

“We just had NASCAR last week. So that brought in quite a few people,” Massad said.

Massad would like events to keep lining up because she said that hopefully means more customers dining in.

“We’re expecting quite a bit. So we’re looking forward to it,” Massad said. “Hopefully we’ll meet some stars or something.”