A tourist-focused transit system that pays Austin musicians to promote local tourism, as well as a variety of programming and promotional activities for historic sites, are among the new recommended uses for the city’s hotel occupancy tax.
This week the Tourism Commission unanimously a report by the Parks and Environment Working Group, which looked at how the city could spend hotel taxpayers’ money in ways that benefit the local parking system. The 16 recommendations, which appear to all fall under state laws on how the tax is used, include advertising guides for parks and related attractions, programs and other content that could be used for media placement, and visitor centers or information kiosks for a variety of attractions and points of interest in the Parking system.
While the hotel tax has long been an attractive pool of money for local purposes, it is equally problematic as the state restricts its use to four areas – convention center spending, cultural arts funding, heritage preservation, and tourism and marketing promotion – with spending caps on some of these categories. The task force was formed last February to look for ways to meet some park needs so that the budget for the Parks and Recreation Department and park-related nonprofits can be used for other expenses.
Although hotel tax revenues have fallen dramatically since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, they are expected to rise again within the next five years to previous levels, at which more than $ 100 million has been raised annually.
After voting on the adoption of the report, the commission also voted unanimously to ask the city council and staff to consider the recommendations during the annual budget negotiations, particularly when deciding how to allocate hotel tax dollars in a manner that is subject to state law corresponds to.
There was some debate among members of the working group about how broadly to interpret the language of the state in order to create a transport system that could bring tourists to and from hotels “in and around the community”.
The approved language of recommendation reads: “Proposed projects in this category include a tourist transport system (e.g. a shuttle, bus route, ferry, gondola or other non-public transport system) for the transport of tourists between hotels and commercial establishments areas and attractions (e.g. Zilker Park or Barton Springs). While the general public could use such a tourist transport system, HOT tax funding would be limited to the extent that tourists use the tourist transport system. “
Commissioner Michael Cannatti, who led the working group, said the city had failed to take advantage of the allowances offered in state law.
“Some of these categories are not being fully used by the city. One of them is a visitor information center, which state law can set up in parks to orient people and inform tourists,” he said. “This was a statement to the council. Here are opportunities and areas that are appropriate for the use of hotel tax revenues in accordance with state law.”
In considering the two motions related to the recommendations, Chairman Catlin Whitington hoped that the language addressed to the council and staff would prevent the report from being overlooked during working sessions on the budget for years to come.
Commissioner Ed Bailey called the recommendations some of the best work that has been done since the Tourism Commission was recently set up. Before voting for both motions, he said he did not want the commission to be asked to rank or prioritize the potential projects as a follow-up request from the city council.
“I want to make sure we don’t get into a downstream process where we try to value all of this to see which is the top priority,” he said. “As we move forward to adopt this entire platform as part of using HOT funds, this is not being passed back to this committee to identify signposts versus a transportation system that makes more money.”
Photo provided by a Creative Commons License.
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