The City of San Antonio held a budget work session on September 2, 2025, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:25 p.m. to discuss proposed fiscal year 2026 budgets for the Convention and Sports Facilities Department, Department of Arts and Culture, and Visit San Antonio, funded primarily by the Hotel Occupancy Tax (HOT). Presentations covered revenue trends, economic impacts, competitive challenges, and proposed investments.
Good afternoon. The time is now 2 p.m. on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025, and the City of San Antonio budget work session has called to order. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Councilmember Corps. Councilmember Castillo Angia. Councilmember Via Gran. Here. Councilmember Mungia. Councilmember Castillo. Councilmember Galvan. Councilmember Alberete Gavito. Here. Councilmember Mesa Gonzalez. Councilmember Spears. Councilmember White. Mayor Jones. Here. Mayor we have Core. Thank you, Madam Clerk. This meeting is to hear about the budgets for the conventions, sports facilities department and department of arts and culture and visit San Antonio. Eric, over to you. Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. So uh Justina's gonna start us off with an overview of the Hotel Occupancy Tax Fund. We'll transition to Patricia Mousquis Contor with Convention Center, uh, then to Crystal with Arts, and then finally uh Mario Bass uh with visit San Antonio. Mayor and City Council, my name is Justina Tate, I'm the budget director for the city of San Antonio. And today I just wanted to provide a quick overview of our hotel occupancy tax. The current hotel occupancy tax is 16.75%, and that is levied on all eligible hotel room nights. Of that amount, the city receives 9%. 7% goes to fund our convention center in Alamo Dome, tourism, visit San Antonio, history preservation, and our arts and culture. So this next slide shows a history of our hotel occupancy tax collections. Our actuals include from fiscal year 2020 2019 to fiscal year 2024. So those years reflect actual uh collections for our hotel occupancy tax. And this slide also includes our estimate for 2025 as well as the proposed budget for 2026. As you can see from the graph, the pandemic had a significant impact on this hot on this revenue source. However, we were fully recovered from the pandemic by fiscal year 2023, where you can see our hotel occupancy tax collections were about 99.7 percent. For fiscal year 2025, we are projecting about a 6.4% increase over 2024. And this is a result of more of our short-term rentals coming into compliance, and the short-term rental platforms are collecting the city's portion of our hotel occupancy tax. In fiscal year 2026, we're projecting about a 2.8% increase. And this is also driven by an increase in our short-term rental collections as well as a slight increase in our average daily rate. That concludes uh my portion of the presentation, and I'll turn it over to uh Patricia for Convention Sports and Facility. Thank you, Justina. Good afternoon, Mayor Council. My name is Patricia Musquis Cantor. I'm the director of the Convention and Sports Facilities Department. Thank you for the opportunity to present our department's fiscal year 26 uh budget. In my presentation today, I will uh provide a quick overview of our facilities and talk about the current uh competitive landscape within convention centers and discuss the convention center's booking window. I will also uh review the historical budget and trends for the Alamo Dome and Convention Center and go over the department's proposed fiscal year 26 budget. Next, I will present the department's revenue enhancements and efficiencies, and finally, I will highlight some of the capital projects we are proposing for next year and leave you with some final thoughts about the future of our facilities.