Wimberley Tourism Director Michele Woods told city council in March that the city collected just over $841,000 in gross hotel occupancy tax revenue in 2025.
“That is approximately a $40,000 increase over the previous year,” Woods said. “So that just continues to reinforce that tourism is a consistent and measurable contributor to Wimberley’s economy.”
The Home Town Holidays campaign has contributed to the uptick in revenue. “There has been an average of a 27% increase year after year,” she said, “which is fantastic.”
In addition to Hometown Holidays, the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop, held for the first time last year, allowed Wimberley tourism planners to extend their holiday programming through the end of the year. In December there was a 6% increase in gross HOT revenue and, in January, a 17% increase.
While Woods can’t drill down in her data to the specific days or weeks to pinpoint when the number of hotel stays occurred, she said, “we gained helpful insight for next year around parking and pedestrian safety that we can tighten up.”
According to her report, one of the primary focuses of tourism in the first quarter of 2026 is strengthening compliance among lodging establishments.
“We currently have 133 active, compliant lodging entities,” she said. “We have been actively following up on our non-compliant entities, working closely with HdL as our partner.”
HdL Companies of Austin is a consulting firm that specializes in sales tax auditing to help local governments recover revenue.
“In some cases of non-compliance, we are offering payment plans for operators who want to come into compliance and are willing to work with us. Our goal is to balance being supportive of those small businesses while also ensuring that we’re properly collecting the revenue that we’re owed,” Woods told the council.
“At the end of the day, it’s about making sure that our tourism economy stays not only strong, but sustainable,” she said.
Another focus of the tourism department this quarter is strengthening the HOT grant application process.
“I put a formal scoring framework in place to help standardize how those applications are evaluated. We want to improve transparency for applicants while making sure that everything is still aligned with our state requirements.”
Along with lodging compliance and strengthening the HOT grant application process, Woods announced that the tourism department will create a Wimberley venue and events guide focused on attracting weddings, corporate retreats, family reunions and any type of group travel. Additionally, they are developing a city limits visitor map.
“Up until now, most of our materials have focused on the downtown area. This is, I think, an important step in better representing all of Wimberley’s Tourism assets in the community,” she said.
