Texas hotel occupancy tax data, explained
Texas is one of the only states where a hotel's real room revenue is public record. This page explains where that data comes from, what Senate Bill 1086 actually restricts, and how to look up any property free on TexasHotelSearch.
Hotel revenue is public record in Texas
Every lodging operator in the state collects the 6 percent state hotel occupancy tax and files it with the Texas Comptroller: hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, and short-term rentals alike. Each monthly filing names the taxpayer entity, the property location, its room capacity, and its total and taxable room receipts. The Comptroller publishes these filings as a downloadable file, one row per property per period.
TexasHotelSearch ingests that file every month. Coverage runs monthly from January 2017 to the latest release, about two million filings across roughly 29,000 lodging locations, of which more than 9,000 classify as hotels.
What Senate Bill 1086 actually restricts
In 2017 the 85th Legislature passed Senate Bill 1086, which bars the Comptroller from posting property-level hotel receipts through its public web search tool. This is why searching the Comptroller's site, or Google, never turns up a hotel's receipts.
The restriction covers the search tool, not the underlying record. The downloadable filing file remains public, and working from it is the only way to see property-level room revenue in Texas. That gap between "not searchable" and "not public" is the reason this site exists.
How to look up a hotel's revenue
Search the property by name from the homepage, or start from the market pages, which rank more than 480 Texas cities by measured hotel revenue and list every filing property in each. Browsing measured revenue is free and always will be. A paid screening adds the research layer: ownership, construction history, competition, hazard risk, and a cited report.
What we compute from the raw filings
Raw filings need work before they read honestly. TexasHotelSearch classifies every location (hotels versus short-term rentals, rental managers, corporate housing, and RV parks, which otherwise inflate hotel totals), aggregates revenue by city and county, computes market RevPAR against registry room counts, measures each market's short-term rental revenue share, and corrects known filing artifacts: implausible room-capacity typos are repaired against the property's own filing history, duplicate registrations at one building are deduplicated, and single-month amended-filing lumps are excluded from growth rates and disclosed on the page.
The state's mixed beverage gross receipts data (monthly liquor, wine, and beer sales by location, back to 2007) is layered on for properties with bars, so full-service hotels show alcohol revenue alongside rooms.
What the data does not contain
Filings record revenue, not performance. There is no occupancy percentage, no average daily rate, and no expense or profit data. Figures are self-reported and unaudited, amended filings restate history, registry room counts can lag renovations, and the filing entity is the operator, which is not always the fee owner. Every page on this site states these caveats next to the numbers they affect.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Texas hotel's revenue public record?
Yes. Every lodging operator in Texas files hotel occupancy tax with the state Comptroller, and each filing records the property's taxable room receipts. The Comptroller makes these filings available as a downloadable public file, so a hotel's room revenue in Texas is public record, property by property, month by month.
How do I look up a hotel's revenue in Texas?
Search the property by name on TexasHotelSearch. Every hotel that files hotel occupancy tax appears with its measured monthly room revenue, trailing-12-month total, and market rank. Browsing is free; the numbers come straight from state filings and update monthly.
Why can't I find hotel receipts on the Comptroller's website?
Senate Bill 1086, passed in 2017, bars the Comptroller from publishing property-level hotel receipts through its public web search tool. The restriction covers the search tool, not the data itself: the downloadable filing file remains public record. That is why a web search never surfaces a hotel's receipts and services like this one work from the file instead.
Does the filing data include occupancy or ADR?
No. Hotel occupancy tax filings record revenue and room capacity, not occupancy percentage or average daily rate. Revenue per available room (RevPAR) can be computed from receipts and room count, but occupancy and ADR estimates only exist in paid vendor products, not in the state data.
How current is the data?
The Comptroller releases a new filing file each month, and TexasHotelSearch ingests it as it lands. Coverage runs monthly from January 2017 to the latest available period, about two million filings statewide.
Is Airbnb and short-term rental revenue included?
Yes. Short-term rentals owe the same hotel occupancy tax, filed either by the platform (Airbnb and Vrbo remit one aggregate filing per city) or by individual operators. TexasHotelSearch classifies hotel and short-term rental filings separately and reports each market's STR revenue share.
Ready to look something up? Start with the Texas hotel markets index or search a property from the homepage.