San Antonio Express-News: The new Monarch hotel at Hemisfair is almost here.

The San Antonio Express-News is out with a preview of the new luxury hotel opening early next year in Downtown San Antonio. The Monarch San Antonio is a 200-room hotel in Hilton’s Curio Collection that is slated to open in March 2026. Journalist Madison Izler reached out to Source Strategies to provide context for the downtown San Antonio market, which has faced demand challenges in the post-pandemic era. The article, The new Monarch hotel at Hemisfair is almost here. Here’s the opening date., provides details on this property that Zachary Hospitality has been developing for a decade.

The $185 million hotel sits on land the San Antonio company is subleasing from the Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corp. and is part of a larger effort to revitalize the site of the 1968 World’s Fair — a monumental event the Zachry family helped attract and built the Hilton Palacio del Rio across the street for. 

This hotel is being positioned as one of the top tier offerings in the San Antonio CBD:

Named the Monarch San Antonio, an homage to the monarch butterflies that fly through the city on their journey between Canada and Mexico, the 200-room hotel will be among the city’s toniest lodgings. Rates will start around $599 a night and fluctuate depending on the season, said Rick Slutter, managing director at Zachry Hotels.

The curved 17-story hotel overlooking Civic Park will feature three restaurants. They will include Oak & Amber, which will focus on dishes inspired by Texas ranchers, coastal flavors and orchards, and Nectarie Café, which will serve French fare and coffee during the day and charcuterie and cheese options at night. Aleteo, a rooftop eatery and bar whose name means “flutter” in Spanish, will offer Yucatán-inspired plates such as cochinita pibil and ceviches.

Source Strategies’ Director of Data Operations, Paul Vaughn, provided additional context to help understand the current conditions in San Antonio’s premiere hospitality market:

Its debut is approaching as downtown hoteliers struggle. More properties have opened in recent years and supply is outpacing demand, with international arrivals down, fewer business travelers coming to the city, and some leisure visitors pulling back on spending due to concerns about the economy.

“It’s a challenging environment right now,” said Paul Vaughn, director of data operations at Source Strategies, a San Antonio-based hotel consulting firm.

Revenue per available room — a key measure of hotels’ performance — at downtown properties was $118.61 over the 12 months ended Sept. 30, down about 3.8% compared with the same period in 2024, according to Source Strategies. The average occupancy rate was 60.8%, down 3.1% during the same stretch.

The downtown San Antonio market has seen a number of upper-upscale and luxury properties open in recent years:

The Monarch will compete with other new high-end hotels that are trying to fill rooms, including the Thompson San Antonio — Riverwalk, the Kimpton Santo San Antonio — Riverwalk, the Plaza San Antonio Hotel & Spa and the InterContinental San Antonio Riverwalk hotels. The Thompson has generally been the most successful of such properties downtown, yet its revenue per available room is down about 10%, Vaughn said.

“Each hotel has to really work to get more heads in beds,” Vaughn said.

Read the full article, The new Monarch hotel at Hemisfair is almost here. Here’s the opening date., on the San Antonio Express-News website.