San Marcos | Buda | Kyle welcome wave of hotel growth

​​SAN MARCOS-KYLE-BUDA - An 83-room Candlewood Suites that has broken ground, is one of about a dozen hotels that are in development or have recently opened in San Marcos, Kyle and Buda within the past year. 

The growth of hotels in the area is partly being driven by financial institutions’ growing confidence, said Jan Freitag, vice president of global research for Smith Travel Research.

Freitag said a study of the hotel inventory in the Central Texas area, including San Marcos, Kyle, Buda, Bastrop and Lakeway, showed that between 2012 and 2015 there were 1,078 new hotel rooms added to the market.

During the same period, occupancy rates increased from 65.6 percent to 78 percent, which he said shows "very healthy" demand growth.

In Kyle, a new Comfort Suites and Hampton Inn are planned.

Visitors to Texas State University and The University of Texas are driving much of the growth in the city because of its nearly equidistant location between the two universities, Blank said.

Hoteliers were mostly unaware of Kyle’s potential as a hotel hotbed until the city began making a concerted push in 2015 to attract more to the area. 

​The cities’ coffers have also benefited as San Marcos, Buda and Kyle each collect a 7 percent tax on guests’ hotel bills.

From 2006-15, taxable hotel receipts in San Marcos, Kyle and Buda increased nearly 166 percent, from $19,123,692.79 to $50,791,505.25, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

The City of Kyle anticipates that 7 percent tax will generate $208,250 during the 2015–16 fiscal year. The City of Buda expects the tax to generate $601,380 in FY 2015–16, and the City of San Marcos budgeted to receive $2.13 million in tax revenue for the fiscal year.​