Guests at one of San Antonio’s swankiest resorts can now kayak, paddle board and float in a fabricated lagoon set among live oaks and rolling hills.
The splashy amenity opened at the 33-year-old Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Villas in early March.
Three years in the making, the 2-acre Big Spring Lagoon brings “a stunning beach experience to Central Texas, complete with turquoise water,” to the hotel, according to the recent announcement.
It’s the latest among high-end improvements and numerous new luxury hotel openings across the city that are occurring in a competitive lodging landscape amid slowing growth nationally.
Nationally, though travel rebounded after the pandemic, it has since slowed, according to a hospitality report by the financial consulting firm PwC, which also forecasts that the rising supply of hotel rooms could outpace a fragile demand.
Last year, destination cities like New Orleans, New York and Las Vegas experienced steep declines in visitor numbers, reported real estate analytics firm CoStar.
In 2023, San Antonio hosted 35.6 million visitors, and 39.2 million in 2024. A typical year is around 38 million, mostly domestic travelers, with about 2 million visitors coming in from Mexico and about 50,000 from Canada.
But during the last months of 2025 and into the new year, both hotel occupancy and rates were down. Demand for hotel rooms in December dropped slightly, with occupancy decreasing by 5% from October and nightly rates by about $12.
Then came spring break, which painted a different picture for the city’s visitor market going into Easter and summer, say tourism officials.
“Spring break was pretty robust for us,” said Mario Bass, who returned to his hometown in 2024 as executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Visit San Antonio and became president and CEO in June 2025.
“In fact, we were one of five in occupancy over our Texas [competitors] — Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin,” Bass said. “We filled up more of our hotel rooms than those other cities.”
San Antonio’s revenue per available room, a commonly used measure of performance in the industry, also went up by 33% over the same time last year, he said.
In data provided in early March by CoStar, nightly room bookings were well up over last year for March and through the end of this month, except for several days in the middle of April when it dipped by 1% or less.
Meetings and conventions and sports
Meetings and conventions bring meaningful business for San Antonio’s overall $23 billion hospitality industry, especially hotels. The 100 conventions and meetings Visit San Antonio booked in 2024 resulted in over 387,000 room nights sold.
In fiscal year 2025, there were 88 events, including the bankable NCAA Men’s Final Four, and over 518,000 nights sold. Last July, the Texas High School Football Coaches Association brought 18,000 people to San Antonio.
“In the meetings market, there’s a lot to be optimistic about,” Bass said.
And while hotel stays have been down in the metropolitan San Antonio area, there’s more to the story, he said.
“Within that story, there’s another subset, the central business district, that continues to perform very, very well,” Bass said. He added that room nights associated with the convention center over the past three years continue to show growth annually, including last year despite economic uncertainty and the political environment.
“We’re a global economy, and things that happen at the global or at the federal level can impact our industry, maybe more so than other industries,” he said.
But for fiscal year 2026, Visit San Antonio has 97 events on the books with estimated room nights at 476,000.
That matters both to the city and to the nonprofit that serves as the sales and marketing arm of San Antonio. In fiscal year 2025, hotel occupancy taxes contributed nearly $28.4 million to the organization’s budget, according to a report for a council committee that met April 6.
‘Unmistakably San Antonio’
Bass attributed some of the recent upswing in tourism numbers to Visit SA’s efforts to market the city in ways that are now paying off.
“We’re fishing where the fish are,” Bass said of a strategy to focus on the Texas regional drive market.
Visit SA is directing a larger share of its marketing dollars on that market, he said, a change in course after chasing the post-pandemic international market in 2023.
“While the market was doing really well in 2023, we have reallocated that funding to really make sure that we’re owning our backyard first,” Bass said. “And that includes not only the marketing dollars, but equally as important, messaging of why people come to San Antonio year after year after year.”
Visit SA is currently promoting tourism with the advertising campaign slogan, “Unmistakably San Antonio.”
Lifestyle and luxury
Rick Slutter, managing director of hotels for the newly opened Monarch Hotel, said tourism is undoubtedly strong in the city. So much so that guests are seeking something different in their hotel experience.
“The fastest growing segment in hotels nationally and in the city is lifestyle and luxury lodging,” Slutter said. “We feel there’s opportunity for growth in that market, that there’s opportunities to attract a new demographic of guests or give them a new reason to return to San Antonio.”
Other hotels are doing just that — upping their game or building new — including:
- In September, the historic Gunter Hotel, 311 N. St. Mary’s St., reopened following a $57 million renovation.
- A month later, the new Kimpton Santo Hotel opened in La Villita at 431 S. Alamo St.
- Later this year, the Pearl’s development arm Oxbow plans to open its new 151-room hotel at 1210 E. Elmira St., across from Hotel Emma.
- Currently undergoing renovations is the El Tropicano Hotel, 110 Lexington Ave., which first opened in 1962.
- IBC Bank filed plans last fall to turn one of its downtown office buildings at 175 E. Houston St. into a 300-key hotel.
Though San Antonio has always been a steady tourism market, Bass said the increase in the number of hotel rooms “means developers understand the long-term value of our city and destination.”
And, “I’m sure the conversations regarding the new sports and entertainment district play into those conversations for developers,” he said.
Business reporter Jasper Kenzo Sundeen contributed to this report.
