NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Two years after the city streets were empty, the Nashville tourism industry broke an important record.

According to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corporation, CMA Fest helped make June the city’s best month for hotel room sales in history with 875,407 rooms booked.

The record surpassed 2019 pre-pandemic levels by 11%, which tourism industry professionals see as a promising sign as more hotels are in development in the area.

“Two years during the pandemic we had gotten down to 10-13 percent hotel occupancy. Those were dark times, and we were wondering what will our recovery be. How long will it take? We had no idea,” said Deana Ivey, President of Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp.

According to Ivey, over the past three years, there have been 37 new hotels with 6,542 hotel new rooms built in Davidson County and 48 hotels with 6,661 rooms being developed.

“We have so much new hotel supply, so trying to drive business to fill up those rooms is where all of our efforts are going,” Ivey said.

She is hopeful that won’t be a problem because she says people are still eager to travel after being stuck inside during the pandemic.

“We have bounced back, fortunately, compared to a lot of destinations we are really in good shape. We still have a ways to go, we don’t have a lot of our convention business back, which is starting to come back, but we have rebounded well,” she said.