The Tulsa City Council approved on July 22, 2026, a proposal to raise the city’s hotel tax rate to 9.9% from the current 5%. The proposed increase, aimed at tourists staying overnight in Tulsa hotels, will be decided by voters in the November ballot. This would be the first hotel tax increase in Tulsa since 1984.
Planned Use of Increased Revenue
The additional revenue from the proposed tax hike would primarily fund interior repairs and maintenance at the Arvest Convention Center and the BOK Center starting in January. Visit Tulsa, the city’s tourism promotion agency, currently experiences underfunding and staffing shortages, limiting its ability to
attract artists and conferences to Tulsa.
Officials Highlight Funding Needs
Renee McKenney, Visit Tulsa’s president, noted the hotel tax has not changed since 1984 and stressed the importance of reinvesting tourist-generated revenue into city venues. “For us, this is a big day in that we want to really make sure that we can take our guest money as they come in and re-invest that into our city,” McKenney said. “Those ways, we invest to keep up at the BOK (Center) and the Arvest Convention Center. And then it also makes a great place for Tulsans all around.”
Councilor Anthony Archie said the tourism department’s
staffing levels and funding are insufficient to retain conference and artist acts. “The reason why many of those (artist) acts and conferences come to Tulsa is because Visit Tulsa goes out and recruits many of those folks,” Archie said. “What we see is, we have underfunded our tourism department. They are understaffed. And if we gave them the resources that we needed, we would be able to continue to bring in some of those acts that we are losing to Dallas or Kansas City.”
Additional City Council Approvals
Alongside the hotel tax measure, the Tulsa City Council approved $1 million for the 1921 Race
Massacre Graves Investigation and allocated over $500,000 for maintenance of Route 66 signs and city welcome signs. A funding vote for $1 million to support the unopened OK Pop Museum is scheduled for July 29.
