A quick online search for hotels in Santa Barbara yields more than 100 results, and this fiscal year, the Transient Occupancy Tax collected from these hotels is expected to reach $30.8 million — 9 percent higher than expected. In 2022, Visit Santa Barbara reported that the average price of a hotel room jumped by more than 40 percent since 2019.
Simply put, the hotel business is booming.
But at the same time, the city is struggling to meet the housing needs of its residents, and aside from a few developers willing to offer a small portion of their units as affordable housing, the city is seeing a wave of hotels proposed by developers looking to make a quicker return on their investments. In the downtown area especially, from Mission Street all the way to the Funk Zone, hotel developers are jumping at the chance to cash in on the tourism industry.