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.

But before I begin, I want to direct your attention to the picture on the slide.

Uh for a while now we have operated under this philosophy.

We call it one team.

It's about working together uh to provide excellence and commitments, service, and execution.

It's a philosophy we hope you'll experience when dealing with our staff.

None of these events would be possible without the hard work and dedication of the CSAF employees.

I want to introduce and especially thank uh the leadership staff that has joined me here or is joining us here today.

I'm gonna start off uh with Monica Ramos, she's the assistant director over the administrative services for the department, Mr.

Ilafonso Rodriguez Sola is the assistant director over the convention center operations, Mr.

Steve Sido is uh the assistant director at the Alamo Dome, Ms.

Ms.

Cassandra Parker Nowiki is the executive director at the Carver, and Ms.

Jennifer Galindo is the fiscal administrator for the department.

Thank you.

Next, this slide, I'm going to talk about the department oversees the operation again of the Henry B.

Gonzalez Convention Center, the Alamo Dome, the Carver Community Cultural Center, but we also are responsible for managing the leases of Nelson Wolf Stadium and Toyota Field.

I'm going to give you a quick overview of the facilities that we operate.

First, the Henry B.

Gonzalez Convention Center is a 1.6 million square foot facility with around 500,000 square feet of exhibit space.

It hosts about 260 events a year with around 600,000 convention delegates from around the world.

Visit San Antonio is charged with selling our center 12 months out, and convention centers staff sell the building 12 months in.

The convention center through its major conventions and trade shows plays an integral part in our economy.

Direct spending attributed to the center in 2024 reached close to 364 million dollars.

Next, the Alamo Dome is a 32-year-old multi-purpose facility with 65,000 seats.

Much of its infrastructure is still original.

The facility hosts an average of 120 event days per year with attendance of about a million people.

These events don't count also additional 100 and additional 100 to 150 ancillary events that which take place in the meeting rooms and the parking lots.

But besides all of the large crowds and the economic impact it generates, the Alamo Dome has become part of the fabric of this community.

A familiar part in our skyline for over three decades, it has made memories for residents in every corner of our city, hosting graduations, high school football games, band competitions, and UTSA football.

Both the Henry B.

Gonzalez Convention Center and the Alamo Dome are major contributors to the city's 21.5 billion tourism and hospitality industry.

Events such as immense Final Four, held here last April and which generated more than 440 million dollars in economic impact would not have taken place in San Antonio without these two facilities.

And finally, the Carver Community Cultural Center, also part of our department, is comprised of the Joe Long Theater and the Little Carver.

Both theaters host about 250 events a year with attendance of over 48,000.

Throughout the country, many cities are making substantial investments in their centers.

Close to home, major Texas cities are investing heavily in their meeting venues, with Dallas, Austin, Houston already moving forward with plans for billion-dollar makeovers of their convention centers that will change the landscape of not only the state, but the national meetings industry.

In order to compete in 2029 and beyond, we must take appropriate steps now.

Larger conventions such as trade shows and associations book their business three to five years out.

For example, in 2026, a meeting planner will decide where to book an event that will take place between 2028 and 2030.

The booking windows shown on this slide in relation to our competitors' construction completion timeline reflects how crucial it is for the Henry B.

Gonzalez Convention Center to begin the expansion.

If we wait too long to announce an investment in the convention center, it will take us out of the 2030 to 35 booking cycle and beyond.

This opens it up for competition, many of which will have new facilities with new amenities to secure that business.

This next slide provides the convention centers and Alamo Dome's occupancy and the number of events from fiscal year 2019 to proposed 26.

As you can see, the occupancy rate in fiscal year 25 and 26 is strong for both facilities.

This year and next fiscal year, the convention center's occupancy rate is expected to be at 73 and 74 percent, which is considered above practical maximum capacity.

What does this mean?

This means that the facility has limited days available to sell and reflects what we that we are turning away significant business.

As far as the Alamo Dome, there's not an industry standard for stadiums for practical maximum capacity, but with only 49 open dates to sell the building in fiscal year 25.

This also shows that the Alamo Dome is at capacity.

Next, the number as far as the number of events at the convention center, they dipped in fiscal year 20 and 21 due to the pandemic, but have been rising steadily since then.

Although we have not reached the event levels we had before the pandemic, I can tell you that our facility revenue as well as attendance and hotel rooms generated by the convention center are higher now than they were in 2019.

At the Alamo Dome, the number of event days also dipped in 20 in fiscal year 20, but they grew to its highest in fiscal year 21 when the Alamo Dome hosted the entire women's final four tournament.

The number of event days at the Alamo Dome shown on this slide do not include move-in, move outs, and conversion days, as well as ancillary events that, like I said, that are held in meetings and parking lots.

It is also important to note that the number of events held at the facilities may not always tell the whole story.

In a certain year, we might have less events, but those events may have a greater economic impact to the city and generate more facility revenue.

So our focus is really on booking uh quality events than the then quantity of events.

Now this next slide shows you the trend of expenses and revenues at the convention center and Alamo Dome.

From fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 26, expenses at the convention center have increased uh by eight and a half million dollars, and at the Alamo Dome by 8.7 million, mostly due to increases in salaries, maintenance service contracts, and utilities.

While there was a dip in revenue at both facilities during COVID in fiscal year 20 and 21, the recovery was quick.

By 2023, uh the convention center generated higher revenues than before the pandemic, and the Alamo Dome that year for the first time in over two decades made a profit and almost doubled its revenue.

The increase in revenue is attributed to both facilities hosting larger events.

The facilities, although great uh economic generators, they operate at a loss and their operations are supplemented by the hotel occupancy tax.

But I do want to emphasize that it is common among convention centers across the country that they're supplemented by other funding sources.

In fiscal year 26, it is estimated that both facilities will be will receive a transfer of about 11.5 million dollars from the hotel occupancy tax.

Next, the proposed budget for all convention and sports facilities total of facilities funds totaled 91.9 million dollars.

That total 59.2 is dedicated for the operations of the Alamo Dome and Convention Center.

Also included in the budget is $2.9 million in hosting obligations that are utilized by Visit San Antonio to incentivize business to the convention center.

There's also $1.4 million in general fund support and $700,000 in special revenue funds for the Carver Center.

The proposed budget also includes $4.4 million for the facilities to participate in the state's reimbursement program.

Also, the budget includes a $23 million in capital improvement projects at the Alamo Dome and Convention Center.

I will provide more details later in my presentation about these capital projects.

And lastly, the convention and sports facilities department personnel complement for this year will stay the same as last year, with 268 positions at the convention center, 70 at the Alamo Dome, 14 at the Carver Center for a total of 352 positions.

The proposed budget includes revenue enhancements at the convention center with no fee increases recommended at the Alamo Dome and Carver.

First, the facility rental fees at the convention center are recommended to be increased by 3% from the current rates and estimated to generate about 39,000 next fiscal year.

Next, the facility access fee for all ticketed events at the convention center and Lila Cockro theater will go from $1 to $2 per ticket to $3 to $5 per ticket, bringing us closer to industry rates.

The increased fee will provide flexibility to charge higher facility access fees for those events with higher ticket prices than those with lower ticket prices.

These events usually are great business for the city as they generate large hotel room nights during periods when hotels may sit empty.

Next, as part of the citywide zero based budget initiative, several of the department's contract and commodity lines were right sized with a total efficiency of about 278,000.

The majority of these savings came from fees to professional contractors as well as from service contracts at the facilities.

In addition, we were able to negotiate a $500,000 decrease to one of our building maintenance contracts at the convention center without jeopardizing the operation.

With regards to capital projects in fiscal year 26, the department has 23.3 million planned in capital projects.

20 million will be used for projects at the convention center, and 3.3 for projects at the Alamo Dome.

Many of these projects were commenced this year and will be finalized next fiscal year.

At the convention center, we have $8.3 million to continue the replacement of the elevators and escalators in the older portion of the building.

There's also $3.9 million for HVAC system renovations, $2.1 allocated for the West Building Park Entrance Remodel, $1.5 for fire panel replacement, $700,000 for upgrades to the Lila Cockro Theater, and $500,000 for plumbing improvements in Exhibit Hall 3.

Some other projects include the renovation of some UNISEX restrooms and the replacement of the carpet throughout the facility.

$1.5 million in projects, including replacement of some HVAC unit components, club underhang speakers, as well as wayfinding.

Now I want to talk to you.

Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, Dallas, our main comms set in the state, are making billion dollar investments to completely transform their convention centers.

These are moves that will reshape both the state and national meetings markets, as I mentioned.

Consider also that the Alamo Dome, which has hosted the men's final four four five times, has a slim chance of hosting that event again.

As the NCAA has stressed, that the dome no longer meets its standards for future events.

At more than three decades old, the dome faces too many challenges at this point.

And San Antonio risks not only losing Final Fours, but any long-term aspirations to host college football playoffs, World Cup matches, and many more prominent events.

A do nothing approach in a very competitive and important landscape will lead to declining market share and impact.

By investing now, we can ensure that these iconic venues remain vibrant economic engines for our city, driving tourism, creating jobs, and securing San Antonio's place on the national stage.

Investment isn't just important.

We believe it's urgent.

We look forward to engaging with you in the future to provide more details on how we can make these improvements possible.

Thank you so much for your time.

Now I'm going to turn it over to Crystal Jones, Director of Arts and Culture.

Mayor, just as Crystal's coming up, we wanted to point out, and Crystal will do so in her presentation, that we are proposing several amendments to the proposed budget.

Um and wanted to take today's uh the opportunity today in the presentation to highlight those uh and answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, Eric.

My name's Crystal Jones, and I'm the director of the Department of Arts and Culture, and I'm really pleased to join you today to present our fiscal year 2026 proposed budget.

Um today you're gonna see metrics and you're gonna see numbers that impact the lives of our community, uh creative community as well as residents and visitors.

But even more, I want to uh identify that today's discussion about arts and culture speaks to the heart of who we are as a city.

The arts are not just a cultural amenity, they are a vital part of San Antonio's identity, economy, and community well-being.

San Antonio's arts and culture sector generates 5.1 billion dollars in economic impact and creates over 20,000 direct jobs.

From vibrant and engaging public art in our neighborhoods to world-class performances on our stages, the creative spirit of San Antonio is alive in every corner of our city, which we'll go over today.

It tells our stories, celebrates our confluence of cultures, and brings people together in ways that few other things can.

And it's so fitting that, of course, we're talking about hotel occupancy tax.

I'll also talk about that impact to tourism as well.

It does not happen by chance.

It takes a dedicated team of city employees, public policy, our strong partnerships with nonprofits, and most importantly, our artists who make it all happen.

Together, we celebrate opportunities for expression, education, and economic growth that benefit every resident and every visitor.

And so this budget is our reflection of our continued commitment to investing in this ecosystem.

And before I begin and walk you through the details of our proposed budget, I would like to have our leadership team stand up.

They are in different corners of the audience here.

We have Diana Hidalgo, our assistant director.

We have Jenny Chowning, our arts and culture administrator, uh, Kimberly Morellas, our public art project manager, Stacy Norton, our marketing film and music administrator, and Carlos Gutierrez, our fiscal administrator, who also has an office right next to mine.

So he has done a lot of work on this budget, but also hears a lot about the budget through the process.

So thank you so much to that leadership team.

This leadership team represents 24 dedicated city employees who take public service to heart.

They are not only at their desk from the eight to five time frame, but they are out on nights and weekends connecting with our arts community, finding out what's impacting nonprofits, what's impacting artists, and what we can do to help them.

And so this is a passion.

This is a passion for public service, but it's also a passion for our arts community.

And I want to thank them for their time.

It's an honor to be among them and to be representing them today.

So today I'm gonna go over our department overview, our proposed budget, some things that we're focused on for 2026 in terms of performance measures, and then also our 2026 overview, the last slide that'll just give you a glimpse of all the things we're working to do in fiscal year 2026.

Our goal at the Department of Arts and Culture is to enrich quality of life by leading and investing in San Antonio's arts and culture, and we do it with our four core divisions.

We have our grants management team that works with nonprofits and artists to create arts programming that is accessible to all residents and visitors again in every corner of our city.

We have our cultural events and exhibits team.

They run two city-owned art galleries.

We'll talk about some exhibitions that are upcoming that we hope you'll join us.

Again, giving direct opportunities to artists and community to explore contemporary art in a free way.

We have public art, it's uh art that you see in murals, sculptures, and also we'll have some shade incorporated in our public art.

Again, looking at this program at investing in our artist community, but also investing in community directly in terms of making sure that every resident has access to art without cost.

And we'll learn a little bit more about how your community members and every one of your districts have helped us create this program.

And then finally, our marketing film and music.

We need to connect with our artist community, connect with our nonprofits, know what services are available to them, and then also connect with filmmakers and musicians to make sure that we are a top film-friendly city, a top music-friendly city, which we have been designated by the state of Texas.

So here's our budget history in the millions.

You'll see where you know the pandemic, we did have a bit of that dip that has been discussed before with Justina, but right now we're looking at for fiscal year 25-26 having a flat budget for fiscal year 26, again with 13.5 coming from that hotel occupancy tax, and that half a million dollars coming from general fund to maintain our public art collection, which is over 600 pieces of public art.

You'll look at this slide as how our funding is broken up and where the investments are really made.

I think one key component here is 65%.

I mean, I would say all of our budget is going directly to community, whether it's public service or whether it's funding, but 65% are going directly to our artists and our nonprofits to create this programming in our community.

We have a 24 positions, again remaining flat, and we have 24 dedicated members to make sure this work happens, and just another glimpse of just how this money is split out across our department, our divisions.

Going in to our arts funding, so looking at, we have a three-year funding cycle.

We go through our grant guidelines every three years.

We do it alongside community, alongside the folks we serve to make sure that we're meeting the needs that need to be met.

And we are in year two of the three-year cycle.

And I want to just highlight what Eric just mentioned.

There have been, just like other cities and all of our counterparts and cities across the country, there are some realities when it comes to changes in the federal grant requirements and the impact.

So this slide really reflects those changes and what we're going to be doing about it in fiscal year 26.

6.2 million dollars will go to 41 nonprofits.

Their commitment and their mission is to do arts programming for our community and our visitors.

So those will go out via grants to operational support, which could fund personnel, could uh fund person uh program cost and also marketing cost.

The remaining 874,000 that we have will be set aside in the budget, and we would like to come back to council in the in the fall with recommendations on how to allocate that money again to our nonprofit arts community.

We have 158,000 that are dedicated to 25 events in our community.

These are nonprofits that may not have the mission to create arts and culture programming, but they're nonprofits that are doing artistic programming in our community.

If you think about the Parks Foundation and how they do Jazz Alive, they are one of our events that are included in this.

So they are doing artistic programming, and it's one time a year that this event grant can go out, a max award of 20% of the total event budget, and we are recommending that 25 events get that total 20% of their budget to create arts and culture events in our community.

Artist grants.

For fiscal year 2026, we are proposing to fund 54 artists with grants between 7,500 and 15,000.

Each artist applies for our grant program, and they can apply for a 7,500 grant, or if they have a more complex project that includes a lot of collaboration, they can apply for a $15,000 grant.

So we would have 54 artists that would be getting a total of about 495,000 to create programs that are available and accessible to our community, residents and visitors.

Now, I want to emphasize this is not a check just going to an artist's hand and immediately you know just being turned around to pay their bills.

These this is these are checks that are being given to the artist to create programs.

These are going to venues, like one artist just last uh Saturday night had an event at Urban 15.

So it's money going to another nonprofit to increase the attendees of Urban 15 through that artist development project.

So it's another way for artists to get new audiences, our nonprofits to get new audiences, and quite frankly, it's a way for venues that may not be used typically for artistic spaces to be used for arts and culture programming.

You'll see on this slide a quote from Beto that's really talking about the impact that his artist grant had on him.

This is professional development for our artists as well.

We have had artists that have produced their artistic program that have been seen by someone who's creating a program even overseas and said, I want to hire you for that program in Ireland, which is a true story.

So this is professional development for our artist, and it's happening right here in San Antonio.

Another thing that I just want to highlight on this and how it connects again with my counterparts that are presenting today.

We have artists in this program that have been hired by incoming convention and meetings to do activations in the lobby of the convention center, activations that are really gathering attendees' attention.

And so it's another way that artists are getting additional revenue and income from our tourism industry, but also a way that attendees are connecting to our culture and who we are through conventions.

One highlight that I want to mention is that we are committed, and I know council has been committed to this as well, as additional artist development, not just giving that one uh grant, and as one artist once said, uh once said, you know, not giving someone a fish, teaching them how to fish.

And so this is grant workshops that we are doing as a department in terms of how do you write an artistic statement for a grant?

Uh how do you write a project proposal?

Um, how do you market your art?

That's really difficult for folks who are not only in the creative element, but they have to put themselves out there.

It's hard for anybody.

Um, how do you work on contracts and business development?

So we do those kind of workshops on our own with our department because we have that expertise, but I want to highlight two things that I'm really excited about in fiscal year 26.

In March, Artists Thrive, which is a national collection of artists that get together and talk about best practices, they do workshops, they do mentorship.

They have selected San Antonio as one of six cities they they will be going to to do artist development in the city.

So this could gather folks from the region to come to San Antonio.

There might be folks that have said, I always wanted to come to San Antonio and I want to go to that workshop.

But the highlight is that they're gonna do they're gonna reserve about 25 spots for our San Antonio artist community so that we make sure that they are getting this development.

Another thing I'm excited about is the Artist Inc.

Express, which will be targeting it in June 2026.

This is a two-day in-person workshop put on by the Mid-America Arts Alliance.

They are a collective that looks at a six-state region of Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas, and they Nebraska, and they are really focused on artistic development, and they want to come to San Antonio to run this workshop that's really going to be focused on artist entrepreneurship.

Very big to teach folks how to do business as an artist.

So those are how that's how we're developing our artists outside of grants.

Public art.

2026 will be 30 years of public art in our community.

We are very excited about this fact.

Uh, look out for some special Fiesta Medals or something coming out in that regard.

But we have seven dedications planned in four districts.

It includes District 1, District 3, District 5, and District 10 coming out in 2026.

But we have 50 projects our team is working on right now.

And this is going through 2028.

Uh, there's projects that are funded by Bond programs.

There's funding that's been provided by our council offices for this funding.

So we want to thank you for your support in public art.

You can see a quote here by a member in District 3, a community member who was part of our community building workshop for this public art piece by Ashley Morelis, which you'll see at Mission and Huff, this little quote underneath Ashley and her studio working on this piece of art that'll be dedicated in October.

And Brenda Pacheco really enjoyed getting alongside her community members, getting us alongside her neighborhood association members to help Ashley create this piece of work that speaks directly to the identity of district three.

So that's how we work alongside your community members, and I want to thank you for providing community member names, neighborhood association member names for us to pull together alongside your offices to go through that community public art process.

We also have eight public art pieces that will incorporate shade.

So far, we're always looking for opportunities wherever there's a public art piece, where can we incorporate shade?

So this is again speaking to that urban heat island effect, and how are we in the artist community meeting that need through public art?

We have 22 maintenance projects scheduled in 2026.

And you can see on these slides, this is just an example of some of the maintenance that we do, but it could be very large scale, some structural elements because we do have public art that's been up for 30 years.

So we need to make sure that it still lasts for the next 30 years and beyond.

It could also be some, you know, really cleanup, like you see at the windows to our heritage where there was just some kind of like debris and mold building up on this where we need to clean it and make sure it's it's in great condition for not only our residents, but we do partner again with our friends at Visit San Antonio and the convention center to promote that we have a huge public art collection.

So when people come to see it, we want to make sure it's in great condition.

I talked about our cultural events and exhibits.

We have 26 events from exhibition openings to public art dedications that we host as a department alone.

We expect to see 35,000 attendees to those different events with 87 artists showcased.

Of course, with the help of promoting, we work with your office to help promote these events.

We hope to increase that number.

Again, it's also artist talks and workshops.

We have our film coffee talks, which have been huge in collaboration with film festivals here in San Antonio, where we have a number of filmmakers that are traveling from Los Angeles, traveling from Austin, Dallas, Houston, to San Antonio for Film Festivals.

We are hosting them for a coffee talk about our film amenities and how we are a great and film-friendly city.

And that brings me to a highlight on film and music.

I think you may have heard through the legislative session that there were some big things happening in Texas when it came to film.

Makes us extremely competitive with other film destinations.

It's a 300 billion dollar investment over the next 10 years.

So that's very important to note that we have continued investment over the next 10 years.

Because before, when we were talking to filmmakers who wanted to bring a TV series to Texas, they didn't know if we had the commitment as a state behind keeping season one, two, three, and four here.

So that 10-year investment is very important.

We have seen every time the state of Texas increases its budget for its film incentive, our film permits immediately rise when the new session starts, which is September 1st.

So we are preparing for September 1st.

Everyone in Texas is preparing for September 1st to start getting those inquiries from filmmakers.

We already have them about not only the state's film incentive, but we do have a local film incentive that provides a rebate, just like the state, but our rebate is a 7.5% incentive rebate.

So what that means is for every $100,000 that's spent in San Antonio on a project, any local expenses to local residents' wages, to coffee shops that you're using, to dry cleaning services, those expenses will then qualify for a 7.5% rebate.

That has been a game changer with projects like say a little prayer that filmed two years ago and is about to announce its streaming release very soon.

It's also just a marketing tool as well.

We have a lot of projects that maybe they won't get that incentive or in terms of maybe they won't even apply for it, but they'll still come here.

We saw that with projects 1923, they already had the state incentive.

They come in film to her for a day, and in one week they spent well over a million dollars on just one corridor.

Um, and it was directly to a coffee shop.

Paris Hatters got a lot of hats sold that week because they were right on that block.

That's how arts is driving economic investment.

We're also for the seventh year in a row on Movie Maker Magazine's Top Places to Live and Work at a film as a filmmaker, and we have again over 30 inquiries already for incentive-only projects.

I want to focus on every time you have a city council meeting, it opens with a wonderful song by a San Antonio artist, original music, and we have seen that program, especially in the past uh two years with some real marketing pushes, increased to 24 new songs for the fall.

So get ready for your council meetings to start out with a new song, and these are again residents in your areas that are creating original work to kick off our council meetings.

We also, if you don't know, June 21st is an international Make Music Day, and we had huge attendance for Make Music Day.

It's really a marketing push to get people involved in making music.

The Botanical Gardens, Texas Public Radio, those are just a couple of locations of the 23 that included live performances with over 40 artists showcased, and it's international, and we made uh the news on a state level and also international level.

Finally, our focus for 2026 is this.

We've got cities across the state that are preparing for that September 1st date, um, preparing for these inquiries to come at the film incentive level.

We believe it's time to refresh our local film incentive to make us competitive, as other cities are looking for incentives that are more than a 7.5% in uh incentive.

So we will be coming back to you this fall with a recommendation to look at refreshing that film incentive, including some workforce development requirements from the production when they're here.

So we really look forward to talking to you all about that.

We also have at the state level what is called a media production development zone.

Now, this is a program that a studio applies for at the state level.

But of course, they have to have local coordination.

So we plan on having some sessions with the state's film commission on what that is and where we can look at regions and areas where we need some studio development.

It's the one key thing that's really missing here in San Antonio when it comes to film.

What that program does is it gives you a rebate on all the sales tax when it comes to new builds of studios or renovations of studios.

So it's a way for studios and production companies to invest in our community and build the infrastructure we truly need to make film happen.

And then finally, the promotion of make music opportunities.

Many of our individual artists who receive these grants are musicians, and I really encourage you to come to one of the performances that they have for our grant program.

Last slide is just a summary.

Looking again in 2026, continuing to support our nonprofits and our artist community.

We've got those dedications coming across town for our public art, and there's some great projects that you're gonna love.

Uh, we've got 35,000 attendees at 26 department events featuring 87 artists, and really importantly is elevating San Antonio's cultural story, working with our tourism partners, working with those storytellers, working with individuals like Greater SATX to say why our creative community is a place that make or it's a thing that makes San Antonio a place where people like to live, play, work, and learn.

It's why me, my team choose to live and work here and play and learn.

And so that's what makes everybody else come here.

So that's really what we want to do is tell San Antonio's story through our creative community.

With that, I'm going to pass it off to my colleague uh Mario Bass with Visit San Antonio.

Thank you so much.

Well, good afternoon.

Mayor Jones, members of City Council and City Manager Walsh.

It is an honor to be here today as I present Visa San Antonio's 2026 strategic plan and proposed budget on behalf of Visa San Antonio, our board of directors, our board chair, Loris Memphi, and our core management team.

Visa San Antonio is the destination's marketing organization or the DMO.

We are the only entity that sells and markets the entire city as a premier meeting and leisure travel destination.

We are also an entity that cultivates and advocates for tourism and hospitality, which is one of the top employment and tax generating industries in our city.

Our mission is clear to bring the world to San Antonio, where we invite everyone to visit to explore and experience our authentic culture, our deep-rooted history, and our timeless traditions.

Each year, visit San Antonio in conjunction with the San Antonio Hotel and Lodging Association and the San Antonio Visitors Alliance commission an independent economic impact study by economic research professors professors from Trinity University.

It is a thorough and thoughtful process that takes time.

For today's presentation, we will present some advanced data points from 2024's report.

However, the full report will be released in early November.

The sum of today's data will be from 2023, which was published in October 2024.

Our total visitation top 39 million in 2024, nearly equaling pre-pandemic numbers.

One of San Antonio's strengths is our appeal to the regional visitor, which helps our community be more resilient in times of economic headwinds, which we're certainly in today.

In 2024, our regional visitation equated to 78% of our domestic travel or 29 million visitors.

In recent years, we have seen other Texas cities aggressively go after these regional visitors.

Thus, our 2026 strategic plan aims to defend our position as a top leisure destination in Texas.

Equally as important to our success is a meetings attendee who books further out, spends more historically, and helps establish a strong occupancy base for our city.

In 2024, we welcomed 5.7 million meeting attendees who met at the convention center and enjoyed hotel accommodations throughout our city.

San Antonio also welcomed 2.4 million international visitors in 2024.

This is a 15% increase over 2023 when we hosted 2 million.

San Antonio's tourism and hospitality industry is one of our city's greatest engines of growth.

In fact, driving economic impact is at the heart of everything we do at Visa San Antonio.

In 2023, the tourism and hospitality economic impact reached 21.5 billion dollars, which is a record for our destination.

Tourism generated tax income helps local businesses grow, new investments to emerge, and neighborhoods to flourish.

This means infrastructure development, enhanced public spaces, safer streets, and of course, job creation.

Selling and marketing our city as a destination everyone wants to visit, explore, and experience is Visa San Antonio's primary focus.

In 2024, 1.4 billion was directly generated by Visa San Antonio selling, marketing, and PR efforts.

Efforts contributing to this return on investment include but are certainly not limited to our destination sales team booking large and layered group business, including the transfer of 14 citywide groups from Dallas and Austin as a close or convention centers for rebuilding, as well as year-round marketing campaigns, such as the Many Cools of Summer, which launched San Antonio as the theme park capital of Texas and promoting our rifle place's military city USA.

Also the marketing and PR for the Day of the Dead celebration, which garner national coverage.

San Antonio is a city of hospitality, therefore we know how to make our visitors feel welcome and at home.

This is one of the unique attributes of San Antonio that makes convention and visitors want to return year after year after year.

I often remind people of our city's mantra that every Texan has two homes, where they're from, and San Antonio.

This adage rings true as more than 150,000 hospitality professionals proudly serve as the face of San Antonio, representing one out of every eight employees.

In fact, as I can attest, having begun my career at the Marriott River Center in 1996.

Yes, that was a long time ago, and my gray hair shows it.

The tourism industry is where many people get their start, learning valuable soft skills, which help them flourish in lifelong, positive, powerful careers.

To ensure a strong pipeline of future tourism and hospitality leaders, Visa San Antonio established the San Antonio Hospitality Foundation, which is a 501 C3 non-for-profit dedicated to education and opportunity.

Through the fundraising efforts of the Riverwalk Royalty Court, the foundation provides endowed scholarships to students at St.

Philip's College and UTSA, who are pursuing careers in our dynamic industry.

This year, five students received scholarships, and looking ahead, we look forward to supporting even more students due to a record-breaking 100,000 dollars that was raised by our Riverwalk royalty.

San Antonio's many offerings are part of our sales and marketing message.

Arts and culture is deeply embedded in what we do as a DMO, and one of the key attractions for visitors and group attendees alike.

On the screen, you can see that San Antonio's cultural organizations are great beneficiaries of tourism, having recently received over 1,100 business referrals for meetings and conventions, wanting to utilize the talent of our local artists.

And 127 visit San Antonio contracts to local artists, musicians, and entertainers to serve as destination storytellers at VSA events across the country.

This is real money going into the well-deserved pockets of our artist.

Additionally, our team produces free riverwalk community programming, attracting over 2 million attendees throughout the course of the year.

These programs include our local artisan shows and riverwalk parades, all which feature free available viewing areas for our locals.

For fiscal year 25, our goals are strategically structured to increase San Antonio's hotel occupancy and sales tax revenues by putting heads in beds, increasing foot traffic to our small businesses, and cultivating meaningful connections.

We will focus on bolstering our meetings and convention space and strengthening the city's position as a premier tourism destination.

From economic impact and brand visibility to community involvement and flight service, Visa San Antonio strategic plan supports the progress and innovation of our destination.

Visa San Antonio will recruit meetings and events, bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to our destination who are immersed in our city's offerings, taking back with them inspiration and new insights to enhance their organizations.

Please keep in mind what's on the screen is not an exhaustive list of our metrics by any stretch of the imagination, but simply an executive overview of our top KPIs, regularly shared with our board of directors and our community stakeholders.

In fact, each Visa San Antonio department has another set of KPIs that they're responsible for, specific to their areas of expertise.

With that said, I'm happy to report we're forecasting to achieve or exceed all fiscal year 25 KPIs, with the exception of sales leads, which is still 98% higher than our pre-pandemic averages.

One of our main KPIs for driving hotel occupancy and sales tax collections is group room nights achievement, set annually and contracted for the current year and well into the future.

In fact, many of our large larger convention center hosted association meetings will contract out 10 years or more.

In our industry, this is referred to as a pace of bookings into future years.

And I'll wait till we get to the right slide because it's important.

It's the one with the graph.

Okay.

Okay.

I apologize.

And it's slide eight.

There we go.

Awesome.

So one of our again, one of our main KPIs for driving hotel occupancy and sales tax collections is group room nine's achievement.

Again, this is referred to as pace as you book it out into the future years.

For 2025 through 2029, San Antonio's group booking pace is held steady when compared to our record averages of 2017 through 2019, specifically as it pertains to convention center bookings.

The good news is that we will sustain this pace for the next four years, especially as we have relocated groups from Austin and Dallas as they were closing to rebuild their convention centers.

Now, conversely, the narrative changes when looking at group room night pace for 2030 through 32 as our Texas competitors are aggressively selling their new convention centers scheduled to open in 2030.

Not only does this chart illustrate uh illustrate this drastic reversal in group booking pace between San Antonio and our Texas Comp set, but we have also witnessed for ourselves our direct competitors in our convention center with zero shame at all, actively courting our existing legacy groups that are the foundation of our success as a world-class convention and meetings destination.

There is an old adage in business that states new beats old every single time, and this is none truer for our conventions and our fickle travelers.

Once the convention center expansion is approved, Visa San Antonio will aggressively work to keep our existing groups and capture the 900 million in potential group business we would anticipate would be available once that expansion occurs.

It is important to note that Visa San Antonio is the only entity receiving hotel occupancy tax that works to increase tax revenues.

Our proposed fiscal year 26 budget is essentially flat to fiscal year 25.

Visa San Antonio will continue to serve and impact our community through significant contributions to the city's general fund by putting heads in beds, showcasing the city's artist, our world-class culture, and our culinary scene while supporting small businesses.

The board of directors consist of city officials and staff, as well as hospitality leaders and community stakeholders.

We draw from a very diverse and deep community pool of board members through various advisory committees dealing with finances, arts and culture, culinary, and riverwalk operations, just to name a few.

Each board and advisory committee member plays a role in the development of Visa San Antonio's priorities and goals and ensures they are impactful to our community.

As we continue to welcome visitors and share the unique spirit of our home, it is important to remember that every visitor plays a role in building a stronger and more vibrant San Antonio for all of us.

In closing, Visit San Antonio aims to foster stronger connections and collaboration, ensuring that everybody understands how vital tourism is to San Antonio's continued growth and prosperity.

Thank you.

Great.

My thanks to the uh to the presenters.

Um in the first presentation as well as in Mr.

Bass's presentation, um, there seems to be a very critical assumption being made, and I would welcome better understanding the data that underpins this argument, um, which is build it and they will come.

Right.

Um I I think it's really helpful as we look at investments either in this 26 budget but other some of the some of the other longer-term investments in this space, that we have a better understanding of the data that you're looking at that shows how the improvements that we would make in this space will in fact make us more competitive.

Um, when you speak about uh, for example, um the steps that our uh other Texas states are are taking in this um and the major investments that they're making, ours are relative are relatively moderate compared to theirs.

So it it begs the question of how does our investment make us competitive in light of the other steps others are taking because we have to assume that those investments don't fundamentally change the landscape and the overall competitiveness competitiveness here, right?

Um I think there is an assumption that these investments may just keep us level when they they may not.

And so again, I welcome understanding the data that points to if we do this, then this.

Right now, it's if we do this, it could do this.

Um, but the given the the definitiveness of the investment, um, we'd like some I would certainly appreciate more data that shows um how these things again would correlate to actual increased competitiveness.

And I think the slide, Mr.

Bass, your slide, slide one is is important because it shows that there may be things happening in this sector that we may not be sufficiently accounting for.

So, for example, on your slide, when you look at 2019 to 2024, um, as you point out, it's strong when it comes to uh domestic leisure.

It's strong increasingly strong in international leaser leisure.

However, even absent the completion of projects in other states, we see a 20% decrease in group business here in San Antonio.

And I help me understand if that you know what percentage of that is attributable to convention business.

Um, but to go from 7.1 in 2019 to 5.7 in 2024, and again, our competitors aren't even online yet, and we see a 20% decrease in that business, group business.

There may be again a better understanding of what's happening in the sector would be would be helpful.

Um I'll just now go on that those are my kind of broader questions, but uh uh Miss Mousquis Cantor, a couple other questions for you.

Again, just because we're in a very tight um fiscal environment and and will be for for the foreseeable future.

I I would welcome understanding on your slide 11 here of the 23.3 million dollars in in capital projects.

Um, can you give us a sense of and you don't have to do it right now, but some written written response would be helpful.

Uh, the urgency of some of these capital projects, what what can be deferred, what are the opportunity costs of forgoing some of these capital improvements that will be helpful because again, 23.3 million dollars is not insignificant.

Is not insignificant.

I'd also welcome understanding what the other projects are, the the 3.1 million.

Um again, the upgrade to the Lila Cockworld Theater.

Again, that's only it's not only 700k, but again, as we look at some of the other investments that we need to make in our community, an opportunity to defer these.

Uh, we'd like to understand uh what that may cost us.

Um so please provide that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I can I can answer some of those questions right now.

Um as far as the other projects at the convention center, you mentioned the Lila Cockerel, uh, we're undergoing uh rigging project right now.

Um, also to get ready for Broadway across America.

We're gonna be starting to host that probably late 27 or 28.

That's one of the projects that is taking place.

Um exhibit hall three plumbing improvement.

Right now, um, there's some plumbing, it's leaking into the exhibit hall from the kitchen upstairs.

Those are some of the uh of you know, some of the the other ones are critical, uh fire panels, those are you know, 1998 fire panels in the older part of the building that we're trying to replace.

West building, we're just trying to spruce up some of those areas, the terraces, the entrances to the West Building.

Um other projects also include carpet.

We're replacing the entire carpet throughout the building.

I think in the just the one in the interest of time, but also the ability to digest what you're talking about, and then certainly understand the urgency.

If you could just provide a written product, that'd be very helpful.

Thank you, ma'am.

And this may be for you, ma'am, or for Mr.

Bass, but can you help us understand what percentage of our hotel night stays are currently attributed to conventions?

And maybe that's something that you need to follow up with, but please help us understand what that is.

Uh, Ms.

Jones.

Um, this is when I look at your 14 million dollar budget uh and the ROI of your of your department, it is very, very impressive.

Um, what I would appreciate understanding um again, as we're making it's we're in an environment of offsets, right?

And trade-offs here.

I I'd welcome understanding the um economic impact of our grantees programming.

Um that'd be very helpful.

I can let me just say I really appreciate um the work that you all do to activate spaces.

Um, as we all know, we're unfortunately quite economically segregated, so activating these spaces goes a long way to forcing some of the geographical engagement that I think we all um appreciate.

I I appreciate the um you know the focus on the San Antonio film incentive.

You talked about workforce development.

Do you anticipate a connection there with uh potentially ready to work opportunities?

Again, if we are going to improve this, then let's make sure we're investing in local talent and keeping that competitive.

Yes, absolutely.

And those are conversations that have already started in terms of what kind of efficiencies, what kind of collaborations we can do with ready to work and also best practices in general.

Uh, from the very outset, what we're looking at is something that's been done in other cities, at least when a production is here, when they have the key director producer, make sure they sit down with our local crew and our um students who are in our programs for UTSA has a new four-year uh film program.

So making sure they're actually hearing directly from those key folks on how they made it through the industry at the very least.

Yeah, certainly.

I I would hate for folks to feel like they have to bring people in from LA or from other parts of the country when we can grow that talent here.

So thank you for looking at that.

Um and you know, the not unlike unfortunately Metro Health.

When I asked uh Dr.

Jacob, who's dealing with uh kind of the double whammies in this space, right?

Of decreased funding, but also let's just call it a more complex environment, more complex landscape.

Um, so I know we are um again very committed to ensuring that we continue to to elevate this important work given the ROI, but also the importance of it to our um frankly the historical contributions uh and the need to elevate those things, especially where young people may not be getting those, for example, in their public education or other places.

So um thank you for your good work.

Okay, thank you.

Uh Chair Galvan, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I just want to say thank you to everybody who presented today.

Uh it's always a good conversation about how our our city's culture, our people's culture uh is uh brings our folks all across the country and even across our region to come here and see what things can happen in a city uh built by folks who just really embrace their identities, right?

Um so I thank you to arts and culture, especially for that kind of work uh that not only does it uh supporting manner but an authentic manner, right?

So uplifting artists that are here, uplifting filmmakers and everything.

Uh everybody who's here is uh wants to share more about who we are as a community, uh not only to each other but also to the larger audience.

So thank you for that.

Um I did have a couple questions for arts.

Um nothing too heavy, I don't think.

Um I know you mentioned some of these workshops, but I can't remember what slide it was on directly.

Um I think it was department events, or maybe it was the other oh no, artist development uh on slide eight.

Uh for those um those events, where do they typically take place?

Are they typically a downtown?

Are they throughout the city?

Yeah, so um we work to uh people where they are.

Yeah.

So we do a number of uh tabling events, workshop events and different nonprofit spaces.

Um we do have some activities at our office here right behind City Hall, but we really try to work with our nonprofit partners to figure out where is it accessible for folks to go, where is there free parking?

So it really depends on the nature of the workshop, how many people we need to host and where we hold those, but we are very uh very keen on meeting people where they are.

Yeah, no, I know the work y'all do is always trying to be get to where everybody where they're at.

Um I guess the big thing I always think about, especially for district six, right, and even some of these other districts further out is making sure those opportunities are available for these folks, especially our young people, uh, who may always have transportation, right, to get downtown or liable transportation.

But I know I always think about uh going to North Side ISD or Edgewood ISD events, we talk about uh the finance academy of these places, and the students will show these incredible work that they're doing.

And I always say, Oh, have you gone to Blue Star?

Oh, have you gone to the Pearl?

Have you gone to these places?

Which is great.

And I'm I'm grateful that they're here in our city, right?

That there still are these gems in our city that people can go to, but it's also folks who are trying to find places in their own communities too, where that little that art hub is if there isn't one.

Uh that's not something for you to solve completely, right?

That's also a natural piece.

Um, but I think it is something that maybe if we can work together uh with different communities, start our city, especially ones further out from the downtown sphere, uh, to figure out ways that we can kind of highlight those areas uh to create those little kind of like uh hubs, I guess, in some form.

No, I I absolutely understand what you're saying, um, especially because there are so many independent spaces that are being run, not just nonprofits, so independent galleries that have popped up in the Beacon Hill area, for instance.

That's a whole corridor that didn't exist even two years ago in terms of the art and culture elements that are there with clamp light.

So looking at where are those independent run spaces as well as nonprofit spaces, I I would love to collaborate with each district on that.

Yeah, thank you for that.

Uh something else I was gonna ask was does uh the arts and culture uh department, do y'all keep a kind of I don't know if you do you keep it or do you have someone who does that keeps like a physical media kind of library?

I know that's a bit deeper of a thing to do, but thinking about the kind of especially the legacy uh arts and culture that our city has, whether it's within film or fine art or within or I guess physical art um or within uh music, um, is there kind of a historical kind of gallery or anything like that within your galleries or anything of the sort.

Um in terms of archives, I mean, we do keep our own department um exhibition archives and catalogs.

Having an extensive library would also include, I mean, if you're talking about like a media library of you know every film that's been made in San Antonio, it would also talk about a lot of space requirements.

Yeah.

Um we've had we we have when we do have artists or nonprofits that are looking to archive things, UTSA has an extensive collection.

So we do partner a lot with our education um institutions here in town that do have the archival capacity when it comes to someone looking at archive archival records.

Um but we do have an archive of the things that we've held in terms of policies that have been made, catalogs that have been made, yeah, and um of that sort.

Okay, great.

No, that's that's helpful.

I think there's uh always a kind of interest that I've had personally, but also that I've heard from different uh residents as well as you know, I think just kind of talking with folks who are will mention, you know, it was San Antonio that had some of these first pushes in maybe blues or in bluegrass or these different things like that within music or even different pieces in art, right?

And trying to find that kind of historical, not necessarily monument, but that expression that that does that was started here, right?

And there's a historical legacy here in our city for some of these art pieces.

Nothing again that your department has a fully do.

Um but I think it's something that would be interesting for our city to see how we can leverage that within the larger context about tourism and related to uh showcasing the work that we do here in our city, uh that San Antonio was not only is not only a place, right?

That um engages in this kind of work, but was actually the pioneer in some of this uh filmmaking processes or within music or within uh fine art itself.

I'm not saying fine, it's not fine art, it's a different form.

What is it than looking for?

Visual art, visual art.

Yeah, we yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, fine, I can include dancing and everything else too.

Thank you.

Um, great.

Then uh otherwise, you know, I think to the mayor's point, I think many others have made this point too throughout other conversations, uh, always seeing uh you using your resources where you uh where you can and most effectively uh would always like to see ways that we can continue to increase your budget here and there where we can uh to continue doing that work that is attracting folks here, right?

So just want to express my support for that generally.

Uh but thank you so much, Crystal.

Thank you.

Uh I don't have too much for the convention center at this moment.

Um for visit us A, I did want to ask um what are the efforts like to pull and well, before I ask that question, for the regional visitors, could you explain more what that looks like and who those folks are?

Sure.

So it's uh 78% of the regional uh domestic visitors coming from Texas.

Right.

That's taking up the bulk majority, but then the rest is Louisiana.

Okay.

Um and the surrounding area.

So it's Texas is driving the majority of it.

Got it, got it.

And uh do we do we have a kind of uh broken down uh what part of Texas are coming from?

I'm nearby or you you name it, but the majority is coming in uh with the uh three hour, that three-hour drive window right, it's Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin.

But certainly Houston seems to be the driver, the majority of that, makes up probably about 25%, and it trickles down to Dallas, Fort Worth, and then about six percent from Austin.

Okay, okay, interesting.

I guess what I was wondering is uh do we see any kind of uh trends with like RGV or border towns throughout our city that come to San Antonio for different kind of tourist events or I'm glad you brought that up.

We we have always been a family-friendly valued destination, right?

And that's really what has driven our dominance, right?

That common are made every Texan has two homes further from in San Antonio.

So we have put a renewed uh emphasis on driving the local visitor or the regional visitor, I should say, including from the Rio Gran Valley.

I think what we've seen coming out of the pandemic though, and and Mayor Jones, it speaks to a little bit about the visitation uh, you know, and the not tracking where where it was with pre-pandemic levels, but you can get to uh hot tax collections in a couple different ways through occupancy and also through charging more.

Coming out of the pandemic, our hotels were certainly charging more and continue to charge more than even the pre-pandemic.

So with that being said, uh there's been a little bit of pricing out of that particular visitor that you've seen, but now that uh average daily rates are starting to stabilize, it's certainly an area of opportunity for us to go back and regain our prominence with that particular traveler.

Yeah, I would talk about that more maybe offline about the ways that uh visit SA or other kind of uh tourist entities within our city advertised to the RGV and two border towns as well as like as Mexico, I think something I had a conversation about with uh Jesus from the airport was uh the reach they pushed for for direct uh travel to Mexico, right?

And talking about how we can't deny who we are, right?

And who we're connected to and what kind of cultures are similar to us that may want to come here because of different opportunities we have in this city.

I don't think you are, I'm not trying to imply that, but I think it is something interesting or worthwhile investing in for our city if we're looking within tourism, right?

Uh not always looking for these other cities to come to us, so yes, they are all always essential, but some of these folks here who already see San Antonio as the kind of next destination for them, the closest city with not only healthcare, but also for uh uh entertainment activities too, right?

Um or hospitality activities as well.

And so you you hit it on the head, councilman.

Um as we're aspiring to be a better version of ourselves tomorrow.

I want to make sure that we're celebrating who we are today.

Yeah.

Uh and that'll come out in our marketing because we have so much to offer today as well.

But that's part of it too, is making sure that we get back in touch and we own our own backyard.

So that's a huge focus for us in our in terms of getting back to basics is making sure we own our own backyard.

Got it.

Thank you.

Um last thing I wanted to ask uh within my last minute, was uh do we have any kind of analysis on where visit essays reach is bringing tourists to within San Antonio?

Like do we see it just a more of a I mean naturally right downtown's gonna be the main place, right?

Yeah for folks who are coming to any city go to the downtown, there's more hostility opportunities there.

But do we see other pockets throughout our city that are also generating that kind of tourist activity from visit essays reaching as as the city has grown, yeah, so has our reach.

Remember, we not only market the central business district, but all of San Antonio.

Right.

So if you look at the breakdown of members, the 912 members are scattered throughout the city and each and every district.

So it it really is coming from every for sure, our downtown is important.

The urban core, right?

Right?

The Alamo, the river walk is why people are are coming, but also everybody in this room.

People you'll see it in the consumer sentiment where people are like, I'm not sure what it is about San Antonio, but there's something special, and it's it really comes down to the people.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Chair Galvon.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Um thank you for the presentation.

I think uh key to this for all three that presented.

Well, first key to this, thank you, Justina, for that presentation.

Um hot tax is is that to tax where we're like, can we spend it somewhere else?

And it's like, no, because the state won't let us.

So here we are.

And I think the key is I'm trying to, as we continue and we look at these uh budget shortfalls, I'm trying to get creative.

So I really need all of three groups that are here, convention center, arts and culture visit San Antonio to start getting involved in that conversation regarding transportation.

How do we move people?

How do we get them downtown at the events?

Where do we where do they go after the concerts?

And I spoke earlier about are we getting our fair share at the city if people are parking in other people's yards?

Can we do a permit?

I think those are the questions that we need to ask.

You know, can we do black car service where it they they get to go outside the perimeter that that our um our Uber and Lyft go because of because they happen to be in a nicer vehicle?

We need to start getting creative on all of our projects that we're doing together, especially when we're doing them downtown and as we're doing them in conjunction and at the same time.

And I think big testing ground will be this October when we have Dia de los Muertos and everything going on, because I know there will be people here for conventions at that um at the convention center.

And to brag on Brooks, because I will is really Brooks does a really good job in terms of of sending out the message earlier about where you can park and how they can get people to that Chantacy Sedvesas.

So that's a mini model of what what we do, but I think we need to start thinking about how we get that their little uh subdivision over by the Kennedy, even has little fiestas before then, so people will park there and then walk down from um like an apartment party or La Gloria to Chanclaci Sadvesas.

So please think about that in terms of uh transportation.

The other is festivals.

I think we need I'd like what I'd like to see Mario from Visit San Antonio is what you do and how you participate in the numerous festivals we have here, Luminaria, um, World Heritage, Fiesta, everything we do downtown and around the city is how Visit San Antonio is a part of them, a part of that.

Um both arts and culture and the travel and tourism industry is an economic driver for us.

It is it is that first job for some of us, it is that side job when you need to make the bills get paid in terms of catering and ushering possibly.

Um I love to go to the majestic, and then I'll love to see them at the Lila Cockerel with all the ushers that are seniors that are helping us get to the seat and making sure we get our programs.

I think that's that's key in in keeping people involved.

So I really this this industry does mean a lot to me, and I think we need to really work on how we move forward.

I appreciate the presentation, Mario, and I think as we move forward, marketing is going to be key because I think what we have that no other Texas city has one the walkability and two the story.

So, regardless of whatever comes, whatever big shiny thing they build in Dallas or Fort Worth or Austin, there the story isn't there, and the walkability is not there.

So we need to start today looking at our marketing for the future on how we do that.

I think it was years ago, and I was at Visit San Antonio with Michelle Moon, and and everybody told us the future is virtual conventions, and we were like, sure it is, and and Michelle can tell you right there, it's not, it's not virtual conventions.

People want to go to a place, people want to be part of it, and they want to come to San Antonio, and as we have the Alamo story and we start telling the Tejano story at the Alamo, more people will come.

As we work on our trail over to World Heritage, uh the World Heritage sites, and we keep that pristine, people will come because they can do that weekend um trip.

As we continue to graduate our classes from the military and we tell that story, people will want to come here for their event.

So I think we need to start the marketing there and be very thoughtful on the process about how we move forward in any phases with um what we're doing downtown because and and I've I and I've said this from the very beginning when we rolled out the phases for what we wanted downtown to look like.

I said my three priorities were convention center expansion because I know the businesses are out there, and I know we can take them from Chicago.

That's my goal.

Uh, second is um the land bridge, because we had the funding, and third was the arena.

So those were my three priorities.

As we look in the other phases, the dome and and a hotel, I think we can that's the where where we can work and we can tweak those.

But these three, and um and the salesmanship of visit San Antonio, I think has to be key as we move forward because this is the people want to come to San Antonio, and they're going to want to come to San Antonio over Chicago and over Phoenix.

Phoenix is the other one on my on my list too.

So I think I'm not worried as much about the Texas cities because they'll come back to San Antonio after they experience, I think one year of the shiny bright thing.

They will come back to San Antonio.

My goal is getting us back to where we were pre-pandemic, where we knew we could compete with a Chicago and a Phoenix for some of those business, and that's where we need to move forward.

So I look forward to all of that festivals, indoor spaces.

This industry will get creative.

Um, and I am in agreement with um movies.

I you know, um the good thing about uh Councilman Gavan is he comes from a generation that knows that it is about that visual screen.

So I I think what we can do um incentive-wise there is is we kind of move forward and get creative there.

So uh thank you for the presentation.

Thank you for your time.

I look um I look forward to seeing what you bring us mid-year on terms of marketing, Mario.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Spears.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I think I want to start with convention, sports and facilities.

So I was wanting to ask what uh specific steps are we taking to reduce disruptions to our small businesses with congestion and road closures and construction around the convention center.

Um how can we increase visitor traffic because of all the construction that we have going on?

Is there anything we're doing specifically?

Well, what I can talk about is that we have transportation plans that we create for every single uh major event that uh we have at the Alamo Dome.

Um we also uh look at that very closely whenever we have major conventions in coordination uh with visit San Antonio.

Most of those times there's a lot of visitors that are staying in our hotel, so they're walking over.

So our biggest focus is on like uh Councilwoman Villagran mentioned on those uh times like you know, the de los muertos that we we know we're gonna be having a convention up at the convention center.

We know that Paul McCartney is gonna be at the Alamo Dome.

We know that at the Los Muertos, so right now we're already getting together with all of our partners with VA, you know, um TransGuide, you know, all of these partners to figure out what can we do to ensure that there's minimal um, you know, that we can reduce congestion.

And do you expect to be greatly impacted by the no longer having the construction mitigation grant program?

Or not really not too much familiar with that, but let me learn about it and I can get back to you.

Okay.

Um my next question is so we've we've invested 60 million in the Alamadum upgrades for the final four.

So how does the may how does our major events reimbursement program and our San Antonio Local Organizing Committee dollars?

How does that work into the funding with the Alamo Dome?

And is that part of the hot that you're talking about?

That 11 and a half million or so, yeah, that's that's separate than funding than our operational dollars.

But um, yes, this last one, the city uh provided a support about you know 17 million dollars that we expect to get reimbursed after we submit that application.

Um what was your other question?

I'm sorry.

Just about how the funding of the SALOC and the MERP come together in your funding structure separate from how we we contribute our dollars in the city.

Um if I understand your question correctly, I mean those are separate dollars, you know, but also hotel occupancy dollars that are added into or budgets, or um, in this case, there was a loan that was provided to the San Antonio Local Organizing Committee to be able to pay for some of these expenses, which again we expect to be fully reimbursed.

Councilwoman, we uh for the couple of years leading up to the final four, we allocated money within this budget within Patricia's budget and the hotel occupancy tax fund in order to upfront the cost of those events.

Um and then um we do so with a conservative estimate that we will be reimbursed.

Generally, that reimbursement from the state takes 18 months, so we don't get it right away, but we assume we're gonna get it back in our financial projections.

Okay, good.

And I can tell you you do need to do those upgrades.

So good on you for not deferring the maintenance, and they're almost every weekend for dance team stuff.

This is the hotbed for dance team in case you did not know.

And um, so yes, I can agree.

Those are definite upgrades that we need to do.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And I think hotels would agree also because their occupancy should stop every time that we have you know a cheering competition or bank competition at the Alamo Dome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Crystal Arts and Culture.

Do you have any data or information about hot funded arts by district that you could get to us?

Um hot funded arts by district.

Um we have information about the number of programs and attendees that have done been done in each district, and also the number of residents who have attended a program.

I don't if you're if you're looking at like direct dollars that are coming to a district, is that's what you're looking at.

We can run some data on um each district which nonprofit, like we have a breakout of each nonprofit which district that they have their headquarters in, but then we also have the number of programs that are done in each district and the number of attendees from a district to a program, whether it's in the district or not.

That'd be great to see, because that's sort of the second thing I was asking about um installations and where they're located across the city.

So yeah, that'd be great.

Oh, yes, we have that information as well.

Um in the last bond, just so everybody's aware, each district has at least two projects, but there are some districts that have four.

We looked at historically when we did the 2022 bond, where did most projects uh get installed in the previous bonds and started to look at getting projects out into districts that haven't had that investment in the in the past?

We can get that.

Okay, and then I asked I had I'm doubling down on what the mayor was asking is um the return on investment that we see from these investments into the deleg into the different um arts agencies and the programming.

Yes, we can provide some information that we have already and then we can look at doing some analysis on information we do not have, but we have information about how many programs um they're providing, how many employees they are employing full time, and then also how many artists that they are engaging for paid opportunities.

Those are the immediate data points that first come to mind.

Okay, thank you.

Mario, I'm a big fan of visit San Antonio.

Thank you.

And I know you're a key economic driver, and I agree with Councilwoman Via Grande that this city is unique because we do have a story, a truly unique story that is basically Texas all in one city.

So I wanted to ask, can you show data like the mayor was asking?

I wanted to also see that chart in the inverse.

When we do the expansion, what will the projections be like to impact our our new revenue?

Yeah, we can see how that will look.

So when we're talking about that 900 million dollars of potential possible economic impact, that's just the entire world of possibility.

That's anything that would utilize 700,000 square feet, currently have uh 500,000 square feet now, but 700,000 square feet of contiguous meeting space.

We'd still have to go out there and get it.

Now thankfully we have the best team in the country able to do that, right?

But it's just a world of possibility.

Um you would have to figure out projections of what that would look like year after after year after year on how that would actually get layered.

Okay, and then can you help me understand?

I know it's probably complicated, and maybe it may be an answer for later, but how you came up.

Can you expand on the $33 return for every dollar spent?

Absolutely.

So that takes into consideration the $21.5 billion from the Trinity professors, right?

Backing out the investment of $42 million, which is the uh visa San Antonio budget divided by that same investment gets you to the $33 to $1.

So for every dollar that is provided to visit San Antonio, it generates $33 in return.

How often do you do the economic study?

And you said, but I'm not sure.

We we do it annually.

You do, yeah.

And I will say this about the uh we're very blessed to have the education system that we have here in San Antonio, especially the higher education system with Trinity University because their approach to this economic impact is very detailed and very nuanced, completely different than some of the other entities that do it in other parts of the country.

Um I you know, I've been in the role now about three months, so we looked and re-evaluated it, you know, as you would do as a leader to look at uh uh all aspects of the business and go, okay, what is the best course here?

But I will tell you that uh economic impact is very, very detailed.

Um I also would like to see if we can measure or or you can quantify visitors by plane versus visitors by vehicle, if that's easy enough to take it out.

You know what?

Let us look into that.

Okay, councilwoman, sure.

So my last question is with military medicine being a focus here, and I know you love the term heads and beds.

How are we thinking about what that looks like for those visitors?

They're here maybe for a different purpose, but um how can we best serve that community?

I think it's twofold, right?

So it's in the marketing that we're talking about.

Uh councilwoman Biodran mentioned about a another marketing campaign, and we're looking to do that uh come this fall.

We should have something that'll be ready to be presented.

So that would uh go and target all our particular segments, uh bioscience being one of them, but also on the group side of things, uh our team is geographically uh deployed to go after those type of business segments as well.

So we'll get it on the group as was the uh the domestic traveler.

Okay, I love to hear it.

Thank you so much.

Uh Chair Aldrade Gavito.

Thank you.

Thank you for the presentations today.

I just have a few quick questions.

Justina, I had a question on the hot tax.

What are other cities doing in terms of one the the hotel occupancy tax rate?

Is there's around 16.75?

Um, and also my the second part of that question is the breakdown between the state, county, and city.

Is it similar for them too?

Uh council member, I don't have that information readily available, but I'll I can work with um Patricia's team to pull that information.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Um the other um question I had Mario, this is for you.

I mean, it was a little bit tied on to what Councilman Gabon was saying about you know attracting our regional um visitors here.

I'm curious if we have you know, I I was also looking at the chart where we have we had a little bit of a rise in international leisure travelers, and I'm curious.

This might be hard to quantify, but if we have the average spend from a regional traveler versus an international traveler, I'd exp I expect the international travel traveling to stay here longer, stay longer and spend more.

But we do have the regional spend.

I'll have to get that to you.

I don't have it uh quickly on my fingertips, and I'm sure you don't want me to be looking for it.

But we do have we do have that spend for sure.

Yeah, and I think that it's it's an interesting conversation to have, like whether we want to continue marketing ourselves as a value city, because I know there's so many people in our city who are tired of the you know margarita on the riverwalk brand that San Antonio has because it's can be kind of a cheap one, right?

And so we want to show um our culinary scene, we want to show our art scene, we want to show other things that aren't just tied to the uh family-friendly value, yeah, yeah.

So and there's probably a healthy mix of both, right?

You know, it's not one or the other, but yeah, for sure.

I'm just curious what that was.

Yeah, it's not this or that, right?

Uh you know, we're charged with with creating a very large net.

Um, and to councilwoman Spears' point, um, we are as equipped to host a bioscience uh technology conference as well as a cheer conference on any given day of the week.

Right.

Uh and all that layered is what we're driving.

I think during these economic times of uncertainty, my goal is to just drive as much here as we possibly can.

And then the hotels uh as well as a convention center, we will determine what is the best piece of business at the end of the day.

But I just want to draw create this large net, and then we'll figure it out right now.

Um, you know, certain market segments are traveling better than others, specifically on the group side.

You know, one of the concerns with the even though the domestic traveler makes a good portion of of what we have here, it's a fickle traveler.

Yeah.

What do you do when you you go and uh you're gonna have a three-day weekend somewhere?

The first thing you do is you pull up your your iPhone and look at the weather, and if it's 110 degrees out, you're like, not today.

Right.

And you cancel because you have three days to cancel.

A group traveler is committed.

They have a contract, there's uh liquidated damages to pay.

And that's why you'll hear in some of my earlier comments, not only today, but through the news, is the fastest way that I know how to get us uh to a stronger tourism industry is through group.

We gotta get more group.

You have the group base allows us not only does it spend more, right?

Right, uh, not only is it contracted, but it also allows the hotel to then layer all these different segments, and whether it's a chair or the or or any of the uh other leisure segments in there and figure out how to drive more from them.

Without a group base, it's it's not a good place to be.

Yeah, it's not a 23 years with Marriott as a director of cells in marketing.

You need to have a strong group base.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, and and that was what one of the other things I was thinking about is that with our summers getting hotter, you know.

I wonder if we do see that negative impact to tourism, which I'd imagine there would be.

Yeah, you for sure you do.

It's impacted by the rain, heat, economic uncertainty.

When you look at when we're doing really well as a destination in terms of occupancy, you got a strong group base, right?

It's the Texas High School Coaches uh Association sitting in July, and they come in and there's 18,000 of them in the city walking around.

Uh, you know, and it's it's when I'm talking about heads and beds, right?

It's a trickle-down economy.

If we have more group, your restaurants are gonna be fuller or have a chance to be full, your attractions are gonna have an opportunity to be fuller, but we have to get there, and the fastest way to do that is through group.

And what are some of the ways that yeah, that's all that's all super helpful.

Thank you.

What are some of the ways that we could highlight some of the small businesses in our areas to making sure that they're getting ahead of these visitors?

I know I always um uh tease with Dr.

Uh Sukor Councilwoman Dr.

Sutcore about redistricting Garcias into D7, but like how are we making sure that visitors know about Garcias, about Banaderia Jimenez, about all the cool little spots in our districts?

100%.

So again, we sell and market the entire destination to this point.

We are a membership organization where we have 912 uh members, right?

And they're scattered throughout all the districts.

So through that, we are constantly uh sending out newsletters to our uh our constituents, right?

Through the hotels through Simpleview, telling them about everything that's happening in the city.

Our event calendar that's on our website also shares a lot of that.

But you'll be interested to know when you think about members.

You know, it might be easy to assume that the majority of our members are hotels and they're not.

80% of our members are not hotels.

Interesting, right?

And those are the small businesses.

Yeah, and it might be interesting if you can just send us that link.

That way we can make sure that the small businesses in our districts are you know adequately represented in that because um I can imagine like some of the small taco shops in our area that have the best tacos are probably not gonna go online and and make sure that they're marketed there.

You're right.

Now, fortunately, I grew up in San Antonio, so I probably know about those taco shops.

Uh my ways I would probably show that I've been eating them.

But um, yeah, I think it's you know, I'm I'm very fortunate to have grown up here because I look at this just as not just another destination as my home, and all those stories are certainly are the stories that we want to uh share specifically on the marketing side.

Awesome.

Sounds good.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks.

That's all thanks.

Uh Councilmember Castillo Anguiano.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you all for the presentations.

I'll start with um for the hot tax.

I just had some general questions.

Can we get the citywide occupancy rate um per year?

Yes, council member.

So for um, we are projecting our occupancy for 2025.

We're projecting an occupancy rate of about uh 59% is our estimate.

Last year, actuals was about 61.2 percent, and 2023 was about 61.4.

Um, yeah, thank you.

I was asking because I wanted to see how it compares um to other major markets in Texas, and like this can just be written um in a memo.

Um I'll switch to convention and sports facilities with Miss Patricia.

Uh just wanted to say I love seeing the support for the Carver Center.

Uh it's definitely a valuable asset here in District 2 and as well as the entire city, and I'm very glad that you know we're maintaining our level with the staffing, so thank you.

Um, as for cultural or arts and culture, um, I'm a huge fan of the arts.

I've been an artist since I, you know, came out of the womb.

Um, so I just want to say I really really appreciate the local cultural arts organizations because it's really often what our local families can access, um, whether it's full glorical classes at the Guadalupe or the East Side Mural ride bike tours.

It just hits me personally because when I was younger, I remember my mom would take us to a bunch of art events, and I actually took some classes at the Southwest School of Arts.

And so a lot of this was just, you know, making sure that we could access what we could without money.

And she basically just helped us love our city even more and just created really, really good memories.

And then I wanted to give a shout-out to Bethle de Leon, who was in he was the one of the grant recipients.

Really, really incredible.

Actually, work with him at Thrive.

And his Jacalito exhibit was absolutely incredible.

It was really, really awesome.

So, you know, good job with that.

And then with Visit San Antonio, I just had one question.

I'm curious to see if we have data on how often San Antonians rent hotels downtown because I hear about it all the time, and it sounds fun, but personally, I just can't afford it.

Um, but I guess I just wanted to see what that looks like.

We can definitely find that out.

I don't have it today, but certainly thank you.

Awesome.

Well, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, Chair Corr, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you all so much for the presentation.

Um, I'll just start off with Crystal.

I'm just gonna give you a quick shout out.

That was an amazing presentation.

Your passion clearly comes through.

You were speaking so beautifully.

I have ADHD, but you definitely captured my attention.

So uh I just wanted to give you a shout-out for your presentation.

It was really great.

Um, there's a couple of programs that we've been working on that we're our office is trying to pilot to see if we can grow.

One of them was the summer we did a music to business program where we piloted piloted funding artists to go out to our FMB businesses during their slow months.

We got a lot of good feedback from both artists and our businesses.

I think we learned a lot, so we're gonna continue evolving that to see if that's something that you guys can explore.

And then the same thing with public art.

I just want us to push, and um, I feel like some of my colleagues have already mentioned the thinking about how do we really look at the metrics in ROI around that.

But I everyone loves public art, like everyone wants it on their pavilion on their street, on their like we could literally paint this whole city in beautiful colors, even if we just painted everything purple, it would be beautiful.

Um, but uh just to push for you guys to think, and I saw your project list, and I know we've had conversations about this.

How this time this process takes time if you want to do it well, community meetings, making sure you're giving equitable voice to artists, and so I know that's why the number seems low of 50 projects through 2028.

And so I understand there's a reasoning for that.

Uh, but I still want us to see if we can push and see if what would it take for us to double that to do a hundred projects by 2028?

And every time we talk about a uh development happening anywhere, particularly downtown, if we can say before we even start thinking about it, before it even comes to um any funding body, we're like, let's start the public arts process, public arts process of it, because we know that's gonna take a little while.

So only push there.

Um, convention sports uh facilities, thank you so much for the presentation.

Um can you tell me?

Did we ever hire that third-party company that we were going to be using for contracting for Alamo Dome events?

We do.

We have venue coalition.

Did they because we changed that recently?

I remember in I can't remember exactly when, but we changed the uh contracting company that we're using, right?

No, it's the same one.

The venue coalition, we're still using them.

They're still, you know, uh providing us leads uh for um you know shows at the Alamo Dome.

Okay, and helping us, you know, um, you know, get more bookings.

I don't know why I thought there was a change there because I saw the number of attendees and um events decreasing in the Alamo Dome.

And so I was wondering if there was any other ways.

No, it's just cyclical.

A lot of our you know, stadium shows that you know, some years they tour, you know.

For example, you know, you might have 20, you know, one-year touring stadium shows, another year you might have 25.

But on average, we capture about 25 to 30 percent of those uh stadium shows.

Okay.

Councilwoman, you maybe remember we changed about two years ago.

It wasn't really recent.

Okay, but it was last couple years.

Time flies.

Um, Councilwoman Spears kind of mentioned this.

I do think we need to think about um continued renovation around Alamo Dome.

And I understand we can't prioritize everything, but you know, we we were joking about Bad Bunny earlier today, so um, I was so bummed that he skipped us the second time he came around.

And so whether that was because of the Alamo Dome HVAC or not, you know, but however, we can figure out how to prioritize some of those critical things.

Like I think one of the really small wins would be concessions, and we've talked about that.

Y'all have presented about that.

So, do we have to wait for uh Alamo Dome like for PFC funding to free up to be able to update concessions?

I don't think so.

So let's try to move on some of those um things.

But I know you're already thinking about that.

And actually, you know, if you are there uh in our building tomorrow for the concert, um, you're gonna see um nine more additional grab and go uh stations that we've um we're trying to get done uh by tomorrow's concert.

That's awesome, thank you.

Okay, and then the only one other thing I was gonna ask is if y'all have ever done strengths finder, I feel like we have a very competitive council because every single person has asked for some kind of comparison across the state for some data point uh so far.

But the request that I'm gonna ask is how do our fees compare to others across the state as a follow-up.

It doesn't have to uh mention just in the memo, I'm curious about that.

I guess we always want to be the most uh competitive city across the state of Texas.

Um, the last thing I'll mention about visit San Antonio, I want to give Mario a shout out.

Um, if you want to just come up real quick, I uh you've done a great job leading the organization.

The whole transition was real quick, and I just think you've done an amazing job.

Every community member I talked to that's gotten a chance to speak with you, is super excited and is looking forward to your leadership.

You mentioned it, you're homegrown, and we we know we love that in our city, and so um I think you've done an amazing job of opening your door and listening to everyone and taking all the feedback.

So I'm gonna put you in the spot.

I didn't give you a heads up about this, but like what's just something that you can share with us that you've learned, and you were there before, and you came back into this role that you feel like you can really use to push our uh city forward.

And the reason why I'm asking this, I'll give you a little bit of context is everyone sees the amount of money that you guys get.

And so we always have to make really compelling arguments for the work that it is that you're doing.

So just curious if you can share with us anything that you may have learned about um the organization and what opportunities we might have to continue to grow heads and beds.

So with the thank you uh for the shout-out and the very thoughtful question.

I think it's two it's uh twofold.

Um, an organiz an organization like Visa San Antonio, it's very easy to become a jack of all trades, right?

Because you have constant pressures from everybody within the community who wants this, that, or the other.

And what I've realized over the past three months is that continues, that request continues.

But the best thing that we can do as an organization is be really good at selling and marketing the destination.

If we do that effectively, it will drive the hot tax and sales tax, right?

And we'll continue to have an impact on the community that we desire.

We do a lot of stuff with the community.

We talked about it, the the free river walk events and the scholarships, and that's all great, and we want to continue to do that.

But again, the best thing that we can do is stay true to our core mission of selling in a marketing uh the destination.

And I'm hearing that from all the conversations that I've had over the past three months, is please do that.

Well, to your point of not being jack of all trades, I'm gonna give you two things that might make you feel like you're the jack of all trades.

But um, one of the things is our river walk.

I want to um I gotta emphasize for my riverwalk stakeholders that uh I love the free programming that you all are doing, but thinking about how we get creative around funding for the Arnis in theater shading for more elevator ADA accessibility on the riverwalk is super important.

So if we we can work together to see where there's opportunity there on that, and then to councilwoman at the Govito's point, it'd be great if we could also maybe see um some of the advertising that just goes in.

I think what we're what we all maybe miss is we don't get to see a lot of that, and so in it you guys do a great job of showing us your economic benefit and your um the net income or the net impact that our community has.

But if we could also see some more of the details of like the marketing when you're showing off our local businesses, I think we it would probably help us to know the the nuts and bolts more of what you guys do.

Would love to this fall coming soon.

Thank you so much for your work.

That's all I have, Mayor.

Thank you.

I'm guessing councilman White has left.

Um, so councilman Castillo, please.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you all for the presentations.

As folks have mentioned, right?

We know that the San Antonio arts community and arts department have over a five billion dollar impact and accomplishing all that with just less than one percent of the city's budget.

So I think there is opportunity as we continue to uh praise the arts team for all the great work that they do, right?

Because Dr.

Niven found that uh the arts impact study uh impacted roughly 24,000 jobs, 1.7 billion dollars in direct labor, as well as a direct employment with over 20,000 jobs, right?

So um these are really great investments, and we need to ensure that we're supporting the arts community to continue uh to create jobs, opportunity, and then of course the maintenance with the arts pieces.

Um, one thing that we're really grateful in terms of the new public art, right?

One of those dedications is in District 5, extremely grateful for former councilman uh Manny Palayas who helped partner um for a muro to honor Robert P.

Kinkiroa, the city of San Antonio and the United States first super fly weight world champion, right?

And I highlight that to pivot to visit San Antonio and in terms of the work in marketing, right?

I'd like to sit and have a conversation because District 5 and the City of San Antonio were home to several world champions when it comes to boxing.

And I think there's a story there to tell and to highlight.

And I know a lot of folks, whether it's golf or whatever their sport of choices when they travel, they're often looking for a local gym to support and buy that t-shirt to represent that local boxing gym in this particular case.

So D5 has the highest concentration of local boxing gyms, and again, that are producing world champions.

So I think there's opportunity for us to tell that story in terms of marketing with Visit San Antonio.

But also, right, ensuring that we're taking care of the art piece too, because while we're excited about the mural, we know it's going to require maintenance and all that important work as well.

I I would like to see in terms of a lot of the requests regarding the analysis in terms of with the hot tax and how other cities have allocated their hot tax because I think there's opportunity in terms of further support of the arts.

So for example, the city of Austin, they've carved out an additional 15%, I believe, to create some type of film department.

So it's its own 15% for film, but still supports the art.

So I think there's other opportunities there to support the work that we're doing here in terms of arts and culture.

And then I just had more of a general point to make in terms of facilities, right?

Um I'll say this as someone, and this is what I value about module, right?

Is that you worked in the hospitality industry, and here you are right telling the story of hospitality in the city of San Antonio.

And as someone who worked in the hospitality industry downtown for roughly 10 years, what I will say is it's the college sports and the final four that have the greatest impact, right?

It's not necessarily someone coming for a conference on a per diem asking for the receipt to get reimbursed by the employer.

It's the college athlete and their family who are coming to celebrate and spend money and have a good time and explore a city.

Um, so all that to say, of course, the improvements that y'all have at the Alamo Dome and ensuring that we continue to stay competitive in terms of attracting more college games, I think are really important, right?

So that those college games ensure not just that the restaurant, for example, uh benefit off of the sale of the plate or whatever the case may be, but that the server gets to walk away with a decent tip too, right?

Um so just really important pieces that are being presented today.

Um I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to explore how we could continue to support uh the arts and culture department and tell that story through Visit San Antonio.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh Councilman Mesa Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, just uh let's see, let's start with the arts.

Thank you for the presentation.

Just wanted to kind of add that, and um just think about district eight when you're thinking about arts and how we can incorporate uh there's really the most culturally diverse district in the city.

Uh we have a Jewish film festival that's been going on for 25 years at the JCC.

So if we can just kind of expand when we think about arts and culture to those areas, I think it's important.

I don't know if you have something to say.

Yes, councilman, we'll provide you a list of some new public art projects that are coming to D8.

We've been working closely with the Medical Center Alliance and also the new park that's going to be built there.

And there'll be uh two public art elements that will be in that park.

And then we we just actually had a community gathering with Culture Winga Ingua running it, and it's about the yeah, this the so-called the Wurzbach area and doing some under the highway artwork right there at Words Box.

So that just happened two weekends ago.

Yes.

So we'll provide you a list.

Okay, thank you.

Um, also, just when we're talking about highlighting our artists, if we can also remember to promote our young artists that are in San Antonio, uh, make sure that they know this is a place that they can continue to work as they get older and do business here.

So do we do any of those programs with within your department, or is that more so in so our by hotel occupancy tax restrictions, it can't be used directly for education.

However, there are a number of young artists that are learning about arts programs and pathways through our nonprofits.

I'll be there's a lot of nonprofits that are providing the sole arts education for a lot of our youth in our community.

I'm thinking about um the contemporary, they're providing for a lot of Harlandale elementary schools the sole arts programming that they have.

So that's ways that we're investing in youth through our hotel occupancy tax, not directly, but it's another element of why our nonprofits are so significant because they're able to do additional programs for our youth.

So we also have an artist registry.

There is no age limit to be on the artist registry.

It's at our website at SASA.gov/slash arts.

If you're an artist that has an artwork to promote, you can do a listing.

It's just like a LinkedIn for artists, it's allowing artists to not have to pay a hosting fee for their website, create a portfolio.

Create a portfolio.

You can put music, you can put videos.

So that's an opportunity for young artists to list themselves and people are being hired from that artist registry.

We provide it to conventions, meetings, individuals, businesses who are saying, I want an artist, and you can filter it even by zip code if you're looking for an artist in your area.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you so much.

And just want to support your focus for the San Antonian Film Incentive and the media and production development zone program.

So I know other cities are looking at that zone program as well.

Dallas, I'm sure, and Austin.

So making sure that we have all the tools available to bring that in to San Antonio, I think is important.

That's all for art.

I had a question for Visit San Antonio.

Do you have a breakdown for the 150,000?

I think you said full-time job.

Is that full-time jobs 150,000?

That's uh part-time and full time.

Part-time full-time.

Do you have a kind of a breakdown of where folks are coming from in the in San Antonio?

I can't get that to you.

We do have that broken down.

And how they get to work as well.

Are they using public transit?

I'm not sure if reporting would have exactly how they're coming in, whether it's through public transportation or through their own vehicle, but for sure we have a breakdown from where they're coming in.

Do you know if the hotels have done any sort of surveying with their employees though on just how they're getting to work?

Listen, I will tell you uh from my experience, uh again, being a uh 23 year uh Marriott career associate that yes, as a leadership team we do because A, it's a people that are are impacting the guest, right?

So we want to make sure that they are getting there accordingly.

So, yes, I know at the hotel level that does happen.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, if you can just get a breakdown of where you know what part of the city they're they're coming from, that would be great.

Um, and then I assume on the I think it's slide six, the 127 uh visit San Antonio contracts with local artists.

Is that are you working with the arts department on those artists or are those separate?

We do.

Okay.

We do.

We uh utilize uh Crystal and her team and their wealth of knowledge.

I'm also excited that Crystal uh will be joining the board of directors with this San Antonio will be an excellent uh guidepost for uh helping us with the arts as well.

That's awesome.

But uh we also through our membership uh team will send out RFPs uh to these local artists uh to make sure that they're aware of these opportunities that come in.

Okay, thank you.

And then just last question on the other revenue the 2.7 million on slide nine.

What is that other revenue?

The other revenue, let me get there.

Is that 2.7 million, six percent?

Sorry, I have a lot of uh that is membership revenue as well as riverwalk activation revenue that comes in.

Uh the majority of that is that that makes up the 2.2 million, and then there's like another 450,000 from hosted events where we go to another destination and we have a trade show booth and we have hotel partners or other members join us.

That's also a revenue driver for us as well.

And the river walk, what did you the river walk or river walk activation?

And that's right, selling of chairs for our Day of the Dead parades, the Cavaliers Holiday Parade, all of that would go into the additional revenue.

Okay.

That's all.

Thank you so much.

Uh Chemungea.

Thank you.

I had a question for the convention center.

Uh I know we had talked about Austin is is tearing down their convention center, right?

Doing a complete rebuild.

Yes, I think Dallas added something.

Are those other cities also utilizing um PFZ for those rebuilds and upgrades?

I know that Dallas um is.

Um, not sure.

I we can get back with you as far as Austin.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to know what financing they do to basically restart or rebuild their convention centers.

Yes, sir.

Thank you, appreciate that.

Um Crystal, I think you're doing a great job.

I appreciate your your presentation and the work that you're doing, and I know a lot of artists um wouldn't make it very far, get that first break without the arts department here locally, um, especially with all the programming that you do for youth and and schools.

So uh I think Opera San Antonio's goes through y'all met with them recently, trying to bring opera to elementary schools, which I think is just amazing.

So there's a lot of great programming that you all do.

Uh, and I know that you're very um respectful of communities that you're going into.

So I saw a wonderful quote from a district three uh citizen about the power of public art and how that can really you know uplift a community.

And I think your department's gone so much better also with how to develop public art.

Uh there was a very controversial art piece in District 4.

Uh, and I think these processes have just improved over time.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I have some questions for Visit San Antonio.

So just real quick, and we talked about this a while back.

So of course, the top two tourist destinations in the state of Texas happen to be here in San Antonio, right?

The Alamo, I believe is number one, the River Walk is number two.

Do we have plans to continue to invest in the Riverwalk?

You know, to my colleagues' point, there are some really older parts of it, uh, especially right out here out front.

So have you talked to business owners that are around the riverwalk or some concerns they have about development?

Um my conversations with Riverwalk uh restaurant tours and and and whatnot, yes, they do have uh some concerns regarding that.

But um the majority of what I'm talking to them about is selling the marketing the destination so and activating the riverwalk at the appropriate times to drive heads embeds.

So I haven't had in-depth conversations regarding the infrastructure.

Yeah, and less about the infrastructure, but um Mayor and I were just looking at each other.

We got an email last week from a number of um uh leaseholders along the riverwalk that were looking for um uh a higher level of engagement around the strategic plan.

Um and I think that more has to do with less about infrastructure, although there are infrastructure needs over there, and more about um the rules and ordinances that govern the leases, but um uh which could frankly turn turn into a larger conversation about infrastructure needs.

Yeah, or just some artistic enhancements of that area.

I think since it's the number two destination state of Texas, uh you know, you walk right out here to the cathedral down and you take the downsteps, usually there's a lot of trash to collects there, you know, for some reason or another, is always a smell in that particular area.

So I think that there's just work to be done to kind of you know make that a little bit better of a destination for folks uh that maybe even have a railing that people have been asking for for a long time throughout most of it.

So uh talk to me a little bit how the T what the T PIT is and how that works to facilitate visitation and support some of the things downtown.

Absolutely.

So the tourism improvement district uh or TPID is a 1.25% um pass through.

It's an assessment uh that is uh for the visitors coming in, right?

They they pay that.

Uh and then that monies are used, it's about 10 million dollars on our uh annually that's collected, and specifically for the selling and marketing of the destination as it pertains to hotels.

We have our uh 15 uh person board of directors of hoteliers within zones one and two, zone one being the business central district, as well as outside of 410.

So there's making sure that all those dollars are going towards selling and marketing the destination, but certainly specific to uh hotels.

Okay, and those hotels pay in to be part of TPID.

Well, the the uh the guests coming in.

Yes, yes, yeah, absolutely.

The guests coming in, that 1.25 assessment that pass through, right?

Is what it is that utilized as it makes up that 10 million.

Gotcha.

And is it it it's every hotel in the city of San Antonio that contributes to the hotel occupancy tax, correct?

Not just hotels downtown.

That's right.

Every hotel.

Okay.

Um and so I think that's interesting because uh and I know we're limited to what we can spend, you know, that tax revenue on, but you know, it's a point that always gets brought up in District 4.

You know, 50 weeks out of the year there are military families visiting District 4 for graduation.

When we talk to some of the hotels in that area because of different problems going on around that area, uh families are not staying there.

They're you know, they'll stay at the Pearl or somewhere downtown or somewhere they think is a little bit nicer, and then drive to District Four for the graduation at Lackland and then just leave.

So there's nothing really keeping them around that area.

Uh and so that's just a future project to work on and see what we can do to retain folks in that area that are visiting.

So for fiscal year 26, um, one of the things in these uh community outreach conversations I've been having is regarding so we don't have a visitor information center, right?

Anymore, what we uh affectionately refer to as the VIC.

Uh what we're doing though is we're adding a body specifically to at least start being the conduit between the guest experience, the leisure traveler, and area that other areas of opportunity to drive heads and beds.

Part of that would be their role of responsibility is reaching out to these uh graduations, the military graduations and understanding what that actual need is and what that miss is, right?

So it should help with that conversation moving forward.

Yeah, yeah.

It's it's it's not a fix-all, right?

But it's a start.

Right.

And we want people to experience all of San Antonio, but there should also be something right outside the gate for folks to do something.

Uh because I can tell you when you drive around, you don't really find those families anywhere near.

Even though there's great restaurants and things to do there, uh they're motivated by other factors to travel elsewhere in the city for those things.

Um we talked a lot about downtown construction, you know, specifically South Alamo.

Have have those projects affected tourism.

You'll you'll see it a little bit in the consumer sentiment, right?

Um conversation and surveys that are done.

But the reality is, as you can tell by visitation, folks are still coming, right?

So we keep a pulse on it, it's a discussion topic, but certainly uh what drives people here, the Alamo, the river walk, uh, the people continues to bring people here year after year.

Absolutely.

Um and you know, we're talking about heads and beds and growing that industry, and and there's a significant return investment in tourism for the regional economy.

But can you are you able to demonstrate and maybe the hotels that the increase in revenue from tourism also correlates with some sort of wage increase in that industry at the same time?

Yeah.

So since here's what I do know uh the probably the best way to answer it.

So since 2019, uh we've seen payroll for their hospitality and tourism increase 28 percent.

Now, some of that has to do with the increase of hotels we had at hotels, but certainly uh payroll would be a part of that conversation, I would imagine.

Yeah, especially if as you point earlier, if hotels are gonna be charging more.

And I know the business is very different from the pandemic and that, but if they're charging more and there's more revenue coming in, and we're seeing an increase in that revenue, uh, I would imagine, I would hope that there'd be some translation also to wages in that.

So you you would see it in wages, right?

So wages is one piece of that conversation and a critical piece, no doubt, but also that has included in that, right?

Our benefits, medical benefits, pay time off, uh free meals, right?

Uh, there's a a wealth of additional benefits that are also related in there that might not be right there and just pure wages as well.

Absolutely.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you very much for your time.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

I just I just wanted to uh loop in and give some highlights and some other input.

Um I love pop public art, and I've I've talked about this, and I'm so glad we maintain our public art structures, but I do think we need to continue to work at getting our art community together, period, because I've said this before, public art is still censored art because we are limited on what we can put on display because of the funds being either federal or state.

So I just as we move forward, I think about um how we advertise studio tours, how we get people in some cases we will need to get people to the artist so that they can see their full um complete talents of what they do because some of that art we would not purchase uh or we would not let them put up because of that.

And so I want to think um, in terms of a good project was River de Artists, where we went out to the different studios and I got to see the artist in motion.

So that was part of EWDC, so I was I'm thankful for that.

And then again, Terry and I do not plan this, but she took all the stuff I was gonna say about boxing.

I guess that's okay, but I was at a boxing match at the Boeing Center, and yeah, sports is tourism and bringing that back outside and downtown, whether it's in Travis or the Market Square, where we can get the community to come out and then get some of those vendors and restaurants to be part of that.

I think that's gonna be key that because we do have those stories, and um I want to say that the best fighters for what I saw were local fighters, but that's just me being biased.

And then um Patricia, I think uh what I would like to do is kind of give like an award for the best event that was hosted either at the dome or convention center or in the carver.

And for me this year, it was um and Cassandra, thank you.

I know you worked with it was AC Alamo Community College's project.

It was for Dream Week.

They brought Leslie Odom Jr.

here.

And I think so far this year, that was probably the best concert interview that they had.

He did some, he he just did an interview and I think saying two, maybe three songs, and everybody went home happy.

He did a little meet and greet beforehand, but I think we need to kind of recognize the different things we do because if you asked me in 2023 or 24, it would have been the bad money concert, but this year it was definitely Leslie Odam Jr.

But this year it was definitely Leslie Odam Jr.

And I think we need to recognize that and tell those stories too, because that was something homegrown by Alamo Community Colleges.

But if you're in San Antonio for a week or during a weekday, that's what we that's what we offer.

And we need to uh continue to recognize that.

So I think we need to kind of do our own little best of the San Antonio conventions and visit San Antonio at the end of the year award.

So those are the other things.

And the last thing, because I it was brought up the visitors information center.

I like the idea of a roving one, but I like the idea better of housing it over by the greater um chamber office building in the lobby.

I think we should do that to have kind of those brochures there and then work with the military to kind of get an information center.

But that's what I'd like to see moving forward is it doesn't have to be a full-blown store yet because we're working on our products.

If if you didn't hear my interview from the my remarks, we're working on our products.

But I think right now, if we just housed ourselves in in the uh greater San Antonio chamber lobby, that would be very helpful.

Yeah, so starting off, as I mentioned, we're having uh a role to visit San Antonio to help with that.

We won't have a the office out of our current location.

But again, it's a start.

What we wanted to make sure was that hey, if we're really talking about owning our own backyard and we're a city of hospitality, that when guests call that they're not just talking to a chat box after hours, right?

If we really want them here, they need to be speaking to somebody.

Uh, we used to have a larger staff that did that, as you know, councilwoman Vieveran, but we're starting with that and seeing where the trends take us to be able to capitalize on that.

Thank you.

Councilwoman Castillo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, a couple of last points that I wanted to make um for Patricia regarding the improvements to the Alamo Dome.

Uh Matthew Solomon's a district five resident, and he's come to public comment before and has reached out to our office in terms of ADA accessibility for the Alamo Dome in terms of wayfinding and as well as staff having understanding of where to direct individuals that may have a wheelchair or need some type of accessibility accommodations.

Um can I send over his information for someone on your team to communicate with him on what you all have in mind in terms of wayfinding and what accommodations can look like?

Absolutely.

Great, thank you.

And then lastly, I just wanted to um again thank Crystal Jones because within the budget uh there is funding to support the Philharmonic, and I know that's work that um she's been working on for the last year and a half, two years in terms of the request being put forth by the Philharmonic, and I know you've been uh have uh having ongoing conversations with their leadership to walk them through this process and how we can get them uh to come into compliance to qualify for funding.

So just thank you, Crystal, for um walking the Philharmonic through that process.

Thank you, Mayor.

Oh, okay.

Uh Chair Corr.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just had two quick things I wanted to add.

Um, another request and Prashad follow up with you on this is but there's a request from uh the Sancho Youth Ballet to use the Lila Crockrol Um Theater for their show of the nutcracker, the floor cloak nutcracker, and they're having some issues and challenges and scheduling, so hopefully we can make help them out if it's possible.

And then of course, Maria had to give a shout-out because you guys do a lot of great work since all the sports conversation was going on with your work with San Antonio Sports and the work that they do for our youth programming is really important for our community.

So I wanted to just double down on that partnership and um figure out ways we could continue to support.

Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you.

Has everyone um spoken or asked a question that would like to.

Okay, great.

Um, Eric, before we um move on, do you want to speak just a little bit?

Um, because yes, there were questions um from the riverwalk folks about what what are some of the changes and those rules might mean, but they also referenced um an RFP for a strategic plan for the river walk that would have a kind of a 10 to 15 year outlook.

So if you want to we're gonna bring that discussion uh to this body probably in a in a B session, but if you want to speak to that, Eric, just a level set with this body, please.

Yeah, thank you.

And and and several of you may have been um included in the email that I referenced earlier.

Um Maria and um several other staff members met with a subset of of uh folks that have businesses on the riverwalk.

Um we're doing some continued due diligence around some of their requests.

Um part of the what the mayor just referenced is uh an RFP that we're developing, the staff's developing.

And although the mayor and I haven't spoken about it, but we've traded emails back and forth, that RFP and that scope probably needs to take on a little bit of a higher level approach.

And what the mayor has asked is that as we get closer to developing that, we bring it uh to the council for some review and input.

As the councilman mentioned, the river walk is a critical part of our downtown and city.

And so uh we probably need to have a little bit more wise eyes wide open as we walk into any sort of RFP around strategic planning and so forth.

So that was the reference, and we'll look to get that scheduled here in early fall.

Thanks, Eric.

Um I'm glad councilwoman brought up the the Philharmonic.

Um this is when you think about the arts and what great cities have, major cities have, they have a strong Philharmonic.

Um I would welcome Ms.

Jones's your thoughts is your thoughts on, you know, we've got the Philharmonic, we've got the other competing entity though.

And so, you know, how does that dynamic constrain our ability to have what we want, which is a world-class Philharmonic here in San Antonio, to the extent that is the best economic driver, right?

Not two entities competing.

So would welcome kind of your understanding of what that path looks like moving forward.

You know, Mayor, um I would like to say that um the competing entities uh um sentiment I feel has changed.

Um I think that um we have two organizations that are operating with attendees and they're meeting their goals in terms of what we require, they're meeting their uh reporting requirements when it comes to their contracts.

So as it stands now, San Antonio has been able to support two organizations that are doing classical music work, and in fact, there's more than two organizations that are doing that work.

So um that's that's what I would say.

I think it's a very um collaborative spirit across our arts community, especially as times are tough with federal funding.

And as I as I see it, these organizations are um have their own specific goals, have their own specific visions, and they're executing them currently um and able to meet their contract requirements as it stands.

I appreciate that.

I I'd welcome though, some analysis as to whether we're actually limiting ourselves by having two versus supporting one very, very well, right?

Houston doesn't have two, Dallas doesn't have two.

Um, as I understand uh um the Philharmonic, those are union members as well, right?

So I think maybe a little bit of a broader of approach, not can we can we support two, but should we support two in light of what we could ultimately have, which is a world-class Philharmonic.

Um great.

Um Ms.

Muscus Musquis, sorry I'm messing up your name.

Um I think you I I wrote a comment down.

I want to make sure I didn't miss mishear you.

Um did you say traditionally both the convention center and the Almo Dome apparite operate at a loss?

Yes, okay.

Um and our occupancy rate is still uh I think Ms.

Tate, you said less than 65 percent on average, is that right?

Yes, okay.

I do just want to kind of give a little bit of context to that.

So that occupancy rate varies every month.

Sure.

So that's the average for the year, and that's just for our hotels.

Sure.

Uh we don't get the data, the same type of data for our short-term rentals.

Yeah, understood.

Um the the point that I would like to make um is, and again, additional data that helps me if I've misunderstood a point of this, please provide.

Um, but if we are already operating at a loss for these two entities, the convention the excuse me, the hotel occupancy rate is what it is.

Is is there a is there an occupancy rate at which hotels break even?

And I I think that's important for us to understand if we're going to add to the supply of hotels in our community, we should understand what we expect the occupancy rate to be as a result of that.

You can follow up if you if you don't have it um on right now.

Thank you.

Um Mr.

Bass.

Um, and I am sorry, I don't I forget the gentleman's name, but I see him here.

He was very kind um as as part of this um visitor alliance group that I that I met with.

Um one of the things that they highlighted though is really our need to better focus on and do a better job of attracting uh the high-end traveler.

Um and this may have been what some of my other colleagues were were talking about.

Um, and that that is a um uh you know that those folks aren't coming here for a rainforest cafe.

And what that does is really lean into I think some of the and some of the activities that have been highlighted here.

What are those things that are unique and specific and niche to San Antonio?

Um so I think toward that, what I would appreciate is is some case studies that help us understand how we could do that better.

So a couple of things that come to mind.

You know, do is there a is there a plan specifically around I mean those two major designations as it relates to our goals for the high end traveler?

It there are.

So our current marketing already has a lot of that baked into it, right?

Because it's a full story.

Uh but certainly uh we continue to focus on and to your point, Mayor Jones.

The the traveler that's traveling now that's not impacted by the economy is that high end traveler.

So we continue to have that part of the discussion.

We've also, for the first time ever, we have a luxury committee for the hotels to really better understand what that means, right?

So we talk about the international traveler who's coming in who stays longer and spends more, but that's Metzgo in Canada.

So we want to make sure that nationally we really understand who that is.

Uh we call them personas and in the marketing terms, uh, and ensure that we're speaking to that.

But yes, that is part of the conversation, it'll be part of the marketing campaign that goes out.

Okay, great.

Um, the other one that I had the the opportunity to see firsthand, and as soon as I walk into these things now, I'm immediately thinking about bond projects.

Uh but the uh the conjunto festival, um, which again is is a on the on the west side brings folks from I mean the vast majority of folks that I met at this festival are not from San Antonio and we're staying there for several days.

So I'd appreciate an understanding, and maybe this is something that you do with Ms.

Jones to help us understand what how do we understand the economic impact of that?

Um the fact that there isn't even like great parking to support that, um, but it is such a huge driver.

And those again are the types of things that are our niche that we really need to to lean into, and that obviously based on their location, Rosedale um do a lot for that immediate community.

Awesome.

We'll do.

The other thing I mentioned from that visitor alliance meeting is the need to extend the days of the hotel stays, right?

What are we at right now?

Is it like two and a half or something like that?

It's uh it's shy of three for short.

Right, and so we need to get to three and a half, right?

That's the goal.

Um so welcome understanding how your proposed budget helps us specifically do that.

We can do that as well.

Yeah, you also see that the uh there's an increase in the day traveler, uh, which also we need to convert them to stay overnight because it helps draw our hot.

So it's a part of that conversation, and we can do that.

Um and slide seven, actually, I think Miss Musquis maybe it's a maybe it's a typo on this slide.

Um maybe it's not.

On slide seven, when you talk about FY23 actuals and the Alamo Dome expenses and revenues, why would why is there no hot in FY23?

Okay, hold on for the Alamo Dome, that's when we uh had a profit we made at 21 million um and our expenses were 19.7.

Uh, okay, so you don't have to offset it.

Understood.

Got it.

Thank you.

And this what that was the what was that event?

Was that the uh we had eight major events that year?

Okay.

We can provide you know those events to you.

Okay, great, thank you.

Um and when we look at when we look at 24 FY24 actual to FY25 estimate, what what do we what do we think is contributing to a 33% increase from in revenue, Almodome revenue from FY24 to estimate 25?

It's a number of major events that we're gonna host.

We only hosted four uh major events uh in 24, five and twenty-five, and we are um scheduled to have seven and twenty-six.

So really the major driver there are large events, major events.

Okay.

So we had four and twenty-four, we're gonna have five and twenty-five, and that's gonna contribute to a 30 percent increase in revenue.

Yes, ma'am.

Wow, what's that event?

What is that one of the it's it's these events, you know, these major events, Shakita, you know, all of those um right now, the weekend, um all of these major events um on a single day, you know, we we make over a million dollars in those events.

Yeah, it sounds like there's a uh market difference in the quality of those events if one more event is leading to a 33% increase.

So the largest event driver and or the largest um revenue generator is the final forward, about 1.8 million dollars in 2025.

And then they have about five concerts.

We're planning about seven concerts in 2026.

That's helpful.

Great, thanks.

That's the outlier.

Great, thank you.

Okay, okay.

That's all my questions.

Thank you for the very helpful presentations.

We look forward to the follow up.

Uh let's see.

It is now 4 25, September 22nd, and this meeting is adjourned.