San Antonio raises the district fee
San Antonio's City Council voted unanimously on 17 September 2026 to raise the assessment that funds the city's tourism public improvement district from 1.25% to 2% of net hotel receipts. The increase is 60 percent, and Visit San Antonio expects another $6.4 million a year for the public-private organisation.
Guests at participating hotels pay $2 to $4 more on the average bill. The assessment sits on top of the hotel occupancy tax. The city's adopted FY2026 budget puts that tax at 16.75 percent: 6 percent state, 9 percent city and 1.75 percent Bexar County.
The assessment applies to hotels with more than 100 rooms. The district began in 2019 and was due to expire on 30 September. The council also voted to extend the district by 10 years. More than 60 percent of eligible properties had to sign off before the vote reached the council.
What the money buys
Visit San Antonio will direct the revenue to financial incentives and marketing. Chief executive Mario Bass said the organisation will offer rent discounts at the Convention Center to attract conferences, alongside a larger marketing push for the city.
The district already pays for that work. Tourism officials spent more than $5 million from the district on the U.S. Travel Association's annual conference in 2023. The money covered Convention Center rent, parties for attendees and expenses for travel journalists. The event drew more than 5,000 attendees.
Groups that book between January 2030 and September 2031 can receive 35 to 50 percent off Convention Center rental rates when they spend specified amounts on rent and food.
A hotel can draw on the district directly. The programme pays up to $75,000 for a group that rents a set number of rooms and generates at least $7 in room revenue for every $1 awarded.
Why Visit San Antonio asked
Bass told the council earlier in the year that most of the state's largest cities run tourism districts at 2 percent, and that San Antonio is catching up.
He made the case on group spending. Conference goers stay longer than leisure visitors and spend more at hotels, restaurants, bars and entertainment venues. Conventions also book years in advance, which makes the room revenue dependable.
"The impetus is to remain competitive within our Texas market but even nationally," Bass said of the increase.
Bass described a booking advantage that runs out. San Antonio's bookings for major conferences run ahead of competing cities through 2029. The city falls behind from 2030, around the time Dallas and Austin expect to finish renovating their convention centers.
The professor's objection
Heywood Sanders, a professor emeritus of public administration at the University of Texas at San Antonio, studies the convention center business. He said cities are racing to expand facilities while attendance at many events nationwide sits below pre-pandemic levels.
"What's been happening in the convention center world is that the market is enormously overbuilt," he said.
Sanders has criticised the rent and cost discounts that tourism leaders use to land large conventions. Tourism public improvement districts are one vehicle for financing those subsidies in Texas cities.
The Convention Center bet
Visit San Antonio has pushed to enlarge the Convention Center. The city plans to do that as part of its proposed sports and entertainment district downtown. City officials have said the facility runs at capacity, and they expect to make recommendations later this year on the expansion.
Bass named two pressures on the outlook. Cuts to federal research funding and national economic and political uncertainty pose challenges for convention attendance and hotel revenue, he told council members in the spring. He also said short-term rental room-night bookings in the city rose from 400,000 in 2019 to 1.1 million in 2025.
What the fee funds next
The district supplies a large share of Visit San Antonio's budget. Hotel taxes are expected to cover 59 percent of its $48.5 million budget in fiscal year 2027, and the hotel fee another 36 percent.
The city forecasts collecting about $85 million in hotel taxes from its 9 percent rate next year. Seven percent of that rate goes to tourism and arts initiatives. Visit San Antonio receives 35 percent of that share, and the remaining 2 percent funds debt for the Convention Center and future projects.
Visit San Antonio said it is on track to exceed most of its 2026 goals for hotel and event bookings. It is targeting 965,000 room nights, 75 major conventions and 825 events in fiscal year 2027.
The organisation moved in 2016 from the city's Convention and Visitors Bureau to a public-private nonprofit. Supporters of the change said it would let the organisation raise money from sources other than the hotel occupancy tax.