TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa’s tourism business is in better shape than a quick look at the hotel numbers suggests, according to a report Visit Tampa Bay presented to Hillsborough County commissioners this week, though the region is running short on places for visitors to sleep.
Santiago Corrada, the agency’s president and CEO, walked commissioners through the 2026 tourism report. On paper, hotel occupancy in the Tampa area slipped by a bit more than 3% from 2025. Corrada said that comparison is misleading because so many residents displaced by the 2024 hurricanes spent months in local hotels the following year. Measured against 2024, a more normal year, occupancy grew by just over 1%.
The money side of the ledger looks strong. For the fiscal year that ran from September 2025 through August 2026, Hillsborough County collected about $68.4 million in bed taxes on roughly $1.14 billion in taxable hotel revenue, the fourth straight year that figure topped $1 billion. August set a record for the month, with occupancy at 67.8% and the average nightly room rate up 2.6% to $142.47.
Corrada said higher travel costs are a drag nationwide, but Tampa leans less on overseas visitors than New York, Chicago, Las Vegas or Los Angeles do, and fills the gap with domestic trips, conventions, sports and events.
The bigger worry is capacity. By the agency’s count, only about 4,100 hotel rooms have opened in the area since 2013, a period of steady visitor growth. One hotel is under construction downtown and another is planned for the Channel District, but financing hurdles and long build times make it hard to add rooms quickly.
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