Tourism Research
Most Frequently Asked Questions
Tourism 1: the practice of traveling for recreation 2: the guidance or management of tourists 3a: the promotion or encouragement of touring b: the accommodation of tourists
Photo courtesy of San Antonio Convention & Visitors Bureau
(1) The tourism and hospitality industry is one of the major sectors in San Antonio’s economy next to Health, Medical and Bioscience, Manufacturing and Aerospace.
(2) The annual economic impact of Tourism is well over $8.7 BILLION.
(3) The estimated annual Tax revenues from this industry for San Antonio is now over $100 million (2004). This includes city sales tax and hotel occupancy taxes and other revenues produced by the industry for the City of San Antonio. When you add other government entities such as school districts, Bexar County, etc. this amount of yearly revenues grows to $160 million per year. The San Antonio Tourism Council conducts economic impact research every two years.
(4) 1 in 8 employed San Antonians works in the tourism and hospitality industry. The workforce now exceeds over 94,000 citizens.
(5) There are over 180 hotels in the San Antonio area and well over 33,000 hotel rooms with 12,000 of those hotel rooms in the downtown area and near the Convention Center.
(6) The number of visitors to San Antonio now exceeds 21 million visitors. 17.4 million leisure visitors came to shop, play and enjoy San Antonio’s unique history and culture. An additional 3.9 million business visitors came to the area for conventions and other business meetings.
(7) In 2006, over 8 million passengers passed through the San Antonio International Airport. San Antonio has non stop service to over 38 destinations in the USA and Mexico. There are an average of 260 scheduled arrivals and departures daily for commercial passenger airlines.
(8) The Convention and Visitors Bureau produced more than 760,000 room nights in 2006 with an estimated delegate expenditure of over $519 millions.
(9) The Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center hosted over 360 events with over 742,600 attendees in 2004. Many of these conventions had more than 20,000 attendees in attendance.
(10) The Hotel Motel Tax Fund augmented the City’s historic preservation and renovation efforts by more than $5 million. These funds are used to maintain and preserve the San Antonio River Walk, Market Square, the Tower of The Americas, La Villita, the Spanish Governor’s Palace, the Majestic and Empire Theatres, the Municipal Auditorium and the San Antonio Zoo for the enjoyment of visitors and local residents.
(11) According to the Governor’s Office, San Antonio has five of the top 10 tourist attractions in Texas. The Alamo (#1); the River Walk (#2); SeaWorld San Antonio (#3); Six Flags Fiesta Texas (#8) and the San Antonio Zoo (#9).
(12) Fiscal Year (FY 2007), the Hotel Tax collection for the City of San Antonio exceeded $47 million of which $16 million went to operate the San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau.
(13) According to PKF, San Antonio continues to have the strongest Texas Hotel Occupancy between 2000-2007 by 75% in 2006 and beating out the competition of Austin, Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas. While the national trend among top 52 markets was 68.4% occupancy, San Antonio continues to excel in all areas and San Antonio’s Central Business District (CBD) reached a 76% in 2006 according to annual studies released by PKF. In addition, PKF reported that between 2005 and 2006, San Antonio also increased the Average Room Rates.
(14) The CVB reports the hotel occupancy for the entire City at 69% for 2005 and the ADR Average Daily rate at $90.96. The highest occupancy months are June and July with March and April. The lowest hotel occupancy is normally December and January.
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We encourage to visit various research sites and check the source for each information. We receive PKF reports every year while the CVB receives data from Smith Travel Research.