San Antonio Business Journal: San Antonio airport area hotels see business drop

The San Antonio Business Journal has new reporting about the state of the San Antonio airport submarket, in part fueled by data from Source Strategies. In the article, San Antonio airport area hotels see business drop, journalist Scott Bailey explains how hotel demand and occupancy have declined in 2025 as the San Antonio International Airport has experienced a drop in travelers.

The piece outlines the core issue:

Despite significant reinvestment in multiple hotels near San Antonio International Airport in recent years, area operators saw a drop in business during a key stretch of 2025.

Multiple factors, including economic uncertainty, may have contributed to hotel owners’ heightened struggle to fill rooms.

The Business Journal uses Source Strategies data to quantify the current situation in the airport market:

Second-quarter occupancy in San Antonio’s Airport/North Central submarket fell to 63.3% in Q2 2025, according to new data obtained from Source Strategies.

That’s a 9.2% drop from the same three-month period in 2024 and an 8.5% decrease when compared to Q2 2019 — just before the Covid pandemic.

Source Strategies’ Director of Data Operations, Paul Vaughn, provides additional context to help understand the numbers:

The hotel industry can point to multiple factors, according to Source Strategies’ Paul Vaughn, who noted that “San Antonio has experienced less tourist travel and group travel in 2025.”

Bailey closes the article with perspective from Sean Hayes at the Austin-Bergstrom airport:

Other Texas markets share the concern, driven in part by uncertainty about international travel.

“What we’re hearing from airlines and peers is that there is less of a demand for inbound United States travel, meaning there are less international travelers coming into the United States,” Austin-Bergstrom’s Sean Haynes said.

Regarding the outlook for San Antonio, Vaughn said, “As consumers continue to face higher prices and economic uncertainty, we expect leisure travel to the Alamo city to remain challenged for the next year.”

Read the full article, San Antonio airport area hotels see business drop, on the San Antonio Business Journal website.