HOT can help Wimberley keep up
The View has had a few things in it about the Hotel Occupancy Tax of late, and for a number of years the HOT has garnered an unnatural amount of scrutiny, and an unusual amount of hostility. And for a number of reasons, it makes no sense for either.
My introduction to the HOT was almost 20 years ago, when one of the more virulently opposed lodging owners complained angrily about it to me. It took about five questions to decide his answers were strangely disconnected from what I would consider a worthwhile reality.
The first question was: what is a HOT? A tax on the room rate charged to an overnight guest, was the answer, the funds from which are dedicated back to the taxing authority (the town).
Why is that a bad thing? Because we’re competing with other towns for overnight stays and a HOT would make us less competitive.
So, if Wimberley adopted it, would we be the only tourist community in our area with a HOT?
No, he said, a lot of towns have them, including some of our biggest competitors. On further prompting he admitted: Wimberley was one of the few tourists towns that didn’t have a HOT.
So, I wondered, can cities mis-appropriate HOT funds, spending them on, say, office supplies or something, or do they have to be spent on something specific? With some exceptions, he said, state law requires the funds be spent directly benefiting the lodging industry.
So, in just those few ques tions I was able to determine:
1. Hotel occupancy taxes are found in almost every tourist city in Texas. (Which I’ve confirmed)
2. If Wimberley had a HOT we might actually be more competitive because not only would Wimberley be collecting the same tax as its competitors, and thus still be competitive on room rates, but our competitors are already using HOT funds to advantage their positions over Wimberley’s.
3. We are, then, the one at a disadvantage not for having a HOT, but not having the funds a HOT provides.
Years after the above conversation, when I found myself on the second HOT Committee (HOT 2), two new anti-HOT arguments surfaced: The lodging industry’s support for a HOT, by opposing lodging owners, the city needed to have a plan for HOT funds before they implemented the tax. And, this same small group of lodging owners also argued that= Wimberley was at max capacity for tourists and tourism, and HOT funds spent to bring more tourists would only make things worse—more crowding, more congestion, more strain on resources.
On that first thing, I wondered: in what situation is that how things are done? Does TxDOT budget road construction based on the number of miles needed, or do they take the amount of funding they already have and apply that to the number of miles they can pave?
The answer to the second challenge has more facets, including: Wimberley’s life blood is tourism, and for lodging owners to have full rooms means crowds in downtown anyway, so not doing anything to support measures to make our system work better is a good argument for no more tourists, but also a good guidebook for how to kill a thriving town.
HOT funds, for example, can be used for ways to mitigate traffic congestion, and might actually improve all our experiences.
When I found myself on HOT 2, one of the first things I discovered from the inside is that, without the HOT all these years we were perhaps at least a decade behind on needed projects to make tourism a more appealing experience, both for visitors and those of us who wade through the visiting throngs.
And frequently overlooked was how HOT 2 actually did have a plan in place, was implementing that plan, and it was based on the HOT funds sitting in the bank.
HOT 2 members prided ourselves on focusing hardest on reality-based ideas that would improve visitor/ resident experience, and yet we also had our pie in the sky ideas to float as well. A few of both have already been implemented, some with HOT funds some with county funding, with more in the pipeline once the HOT is implemented again.
And, let me use my direct experience as a guide to this next part: do lodging owners support or oppose the HOT?
By the loudness of a few voices, one might think they enjoy widespread support in opposing the HOT. But, my experience of talking with dozens of lodging owners leads me to believe it’s the difference between those who shout down the majority rather than represent it, because by a large margin lodging owners support some form of HOT.
Most people recognize where Wimberley’s future is going, and we need more funding to get there than the meager share of city sales tax—Wimberley’s only source of funding—will ever provide, and that, too, points directly to a hotel occupancy tax, not as a cure-all but a step in the right direction.
The argument that Wimberley doesn’t need to grow is an especially weak one, because, like it or not, Wimberley will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. And not just as a tourist destination, or a retirement community, but as a worthwhile place to raise children and grow old in a superior atmosphere.
From all those perspectives, HOT funds will strengthen the tourist industry—lodging as well as restaurants and local shops—and, by default, the lives of all of us simply by being able to support good shopping and restaurants that weren’t here when my wife and I bought here 25 years ago.
The HOT is not the only answer, but a hotel occupancy tax is paid only by visitors, the funds of which benefit us all, and it’s time we implement—and keep— the HOT, otherwise we’ll just keep stumbling blindly into a less certain future.
Clay Ewing