Carol Ann and Hoss Bates drove from the mountains of North Carolina to see the Alamo last week. A visit to Texas’ top tourist attraction had been on their bucket list for years.
When the couple arrived, the Main Gate and Lunette were taped off to the public and temperatures approached triple digits, but they didn’t mind.
The couple stood in the blazing sun at the 18 Pounder Losoya House exhibit across Alamo Street from the Main Gate and Lunette, Carol Ann Bates in her Davy Crockett T-shirt, her husband sporting the iconic Alamo roofline on his tee.
Both work for school districts, so like many families, summer is when they’re able to travel. The Alamo “did not disappoint,” said Hoss Bates.
After the Alamo, the River Walk was their top destination. “It’s so cool, I love it,” said Carol Ann Bates.
The couple visited San Antonio during what tourism officials say is the busiest time of the year for leisure travelers, even as summer temperatures here climb from sweltering to dangerously hot more days than not.
Now tourism officials say they’re addressing the issue head-on.
Summer’s new normal
San Antonio experienced 75 triple-digit days in 2023, blowing past the 59 we sweated through in 2022. That made last year the city’s hottest since meteorological record-keeping began in the late 1800s.
So far this summer, there have been fewer triple-digit days, and the average maximum temperature in June was 102, down from 106 the previous summer. But by almost all accounts, higher temperatures are the new normal, making it a challenge to market the city to visitors whose spending, in 2022, made a $19 billion impact and employed 140,000 people.
Year-round tourism is getting stronger in San Antonio, said Visit San Antonio Chief Marketing Officer Andres Muñoz, but summer remains the peak season. Hotel occupancy rates last month were at 66%, which he called “flat” compared to last June. Weekend occupancy rates are higher — for May and June, they were at 72%, which Muñoz said was “strong” compared to other, similar destinations.
He acknowledged that one of the biggest challenges facing the industry is the heat.
“It started really well in 2023,” he said, but as the number of triple-digit days kept coming, occupancy fell, hitting hotels, restaurants and local attractions hard. “It was a tough one,” he said of the season.
Recognizing that summer 2024 was shaping up to be similarly hot, Visit San Antonio started strategizing in January with member businesses over how to market the city for the all-important summer months.
Water parks, pools and paletas
“The Many Cools of San Antonio” was born. The campaign highlights the city’s water parks, pools and a plethora of special offers that give visitors a chance to beat the heat, like drink specials and poolside paletas.
Omni La Mansión del Rio, for example, is hosting live mariachi music at its courtyard pool on Friday evenings and a “Summer Dive-In” series of movies by the pool.
Bill Brendel, president and CEO of the San Antonio Visitor Alliance, said many of its members, which include hotels, restaurants, tour companies, museums and theme parks, have participated in the campaign, and they appreciate Visit San Antonio being more proactive this summer.
“Last summer I think they were in sort of reactive effort, you know, once the news was like, it’s over 100 every day,” Brendel said. “This was a good approach to take. And they’re promoting San Antonio as the theme park capital of Texas.”
A Sea World San Antonio spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on attendance figures, but she shared details about two new water-themed attractions: Tikitapu Splash at its Aquatica water park and Catapult Falls, a water flume/roller coaster mashup at SeaWorld.
Construction woes remain
But for many businesses downtown, the heat isn’t the only challenge.
The corridor that used to take visitors from the Alamo to the Hyatt Regency and the River Walk is roped off and scraped bare. To the south, construction on the Alamo’s Education Center makes it difficult to get to the state’s number one attraction.
Farther down South Alamo, barriers around the rising skeleton of the long-awaited Civic Park hotel clogged traffic in all directions.
Across the street, the Little Rhein Prost Haus stood cool and largely empty on a recent Monday afternoon. Behind the restaurant, its terraced patio rose above the River Walk, offering misters and a cool breeze under the shade of a towering bald cypress.
“It’s hot and nobody’s here,” said Jamie Maldonado, a manager at the historic restaurant, which is housed in “the oldest two-story rock building in Bexar County,” according to its website. “We’re just hanging on ’til the construction is done,” she said.
Centro San Antonio continues to do its part to “activate” downtown tourism; the nonprofit followed its first multi-day Holidays on Houston Street event with a July Fourth-themed week, Stars & Stripes on Houston Street, with a river parade, a concert and a drone light show at the Alamo and paleta pop-ups all week long.
Investing in the future
Juan Sanchez, a manager at Casa Rio, home to the oft-photographed colorful umbrellas along the River Walk, said customers found it too hot to sit outside in the afternoons. But inside, during the lull between lunch and dinner, the place was hopping.
Sanchez said the restaurant’s status as the oldest restaurant on the River Walk, and its location near the Go Rio riverboats, has helped it draw customers even as other River Walk restaurants have struggled, leading owners to lobby for more funding and fresh attractions.
Hooters on the River Walk closed abruptly late last month, and traffic at the Agave Bar, situated diagonally across the river from the three-story location where Rio Rio Cantina closed last year, is “down big time,” said manager Scott Reed. The bar is part of a group of locally owned River Walk restaurants, including the Lone Star Cafe next door, that have seen decreased traffic from the heat and construction, he said.
It’s frustrating, Reed said, but the company is still all in on the River Walk, working with local artist Andy Benavides to renovate the former Italian restaurant attached to the Agave Bar into a hip new bar.
“We know we’re in a down year,” he said. But the Final Four will be held in San Antonio this spring, he said, and someday, construction will finally be complete. “We’re really investing in the future.”
