With more tourists coming to Austin each year, the city’s hotels are generating more and more revenue. Some of that funding is set aside to support Austin’s tourism industry, and as the number of guests and hotels grow, so does that pot of money. A city task force is exploring new ways to spend the […]
Hotel Occupancy Tax
A tax on the rental of a room in a hotel or other rental properties (including apartments) that cost 6 percent of the cost of a room.
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
Seeking $100M, springs supporters target convention center expansion proposal
Fine arts and natural resources advocates are stepping up their involvement with a city task force that will play a large role in shaping how the city allocates the fast-growing pool of revenue from Hotel Occupancy Tax, which totaled about $100 million in 2016. And the methods used by the two sectors are different because […]
Posted inCity Council
Council hears funding options for new convention center
Faced with concerns that the city is losing revenue because the Austin Convention Center is too small, City Council heard proposals for convention center expansions that ranged from $400 million to $600 million projects at its work session Tuesday. Carla Steffen, deputy director and chief financial officer of the convention center, presented several proposals to […]
Posted inAustin
Hotel tax increase would fund most aggressive convention center plan
A 2-percentage-point uptick in the city’s hotel occupancy tax appears to be the most favored method of expanding the Austin Convention Center and turning the area around it into a lifestyle and tourist epicenter. That financing option, which would be a key part of a possible $609 million expansion, was one of several discussed recently […]
Posted inPreservation
For historic grants program, use-it-or-lose-it process leaves dollars unspent
Historic sites around Austin could be on the receiving end of money from the city’s fast-growing Hotel Occupancy Tax if the advisory body formed to examine how the tax revenue is allocated recommends that City Council relax the application process. At Tuesday’s meeting of the Visitor Impact Task Force, members learned that a portion of […]
Posted inAustin
Hotel business – and HOT revenue – would accelerate with convention center expansion
The biggest number looming over the Visitor Impact Task Force is fairly easy to grasp: The city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax generated more than $90 million in revenue in 2016, with double-digit growth expected well into the future. It’s the many other numbers and percentages – and how those figures are parsed and allocated – that […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
With $90 million up for grabs, Visitor Impact Task Force faces hefty charge
The city’s new Visitor Impact Task Force hopes to accomplish several goals in the next four months, all of them having to do with how the city can best grapple with the growing number of tourists coming to Austin each year. But the most significant of those goals by far is coming up with ideas […]
Posted inCity Council
Union talk makes arts funding approval rancorous
After more than two hours of often angry and conflicting testimony about the state of labor relations at the ZACH Theatre, City Council on Thursday approved the cultural arts services contract for the upcoming year with a number of controversial amendments that were reworked during the day. The agreement covers eight nonprofit organizations – ZACH, […]
Posted inBudget
Task force to investigate HOT tax spending
City Council will spend the coming weeks looking into whether Austin’s Hotel Occupancy Tax (or HOT tax) should continue to be used only for tourism, or if there are better uses for the rapidly growing tax revenue. At their meeting on Aug. 18, Council members unanimously passed a resolution to form a task force to […]
Posted inMusic & Entertainment
Could more tourist spots benefit from hotel tax?
Austin residents are no strangers to big local events and, increasingly, neither are out-of-towners – but all of those visitors can take a toll on the city’s infrastructure. City Council is set to consider a plan that could direct more funding toward facilities affected by tourism. The money would come from something called the Hotel […]
Posted inLocal Politics
Arts Commission worried programs could lose funds under new plan
Arts Commission Chair Brett Barnes sounded an alarm this week over what he characterized as a move to strip funding from the city’s Cultural Arts Grant Program. His concerns focused around a suggestion that a portion of the city’s Hotel/ Occupancy Tax, or HOT, typically used to fund smaller arts grants might be shifted to instead […]