While other government revenues are in a state of recession-influenced flux, tax revenues from Gainesville’s tourism industry have continued to climb since 2008, officials say.

Revenues from the city’s hotel-motel tax, a 6 percent tax charged on top of visitors’ bills in the city’s hotels and motels, have grown by more than 28 percent in a five-year time frame for Gainesville.

Gainesville’s keeper of the purse, Administrative Services Director Melody Marlowe, attributes the change to two things: The city’s number of hotels has grown in recent years — from 11 hotels to 13 in 2010 — and so has its “local tourism economy,” she said.

City officials in Georgia are allowed to levy a tax on hotel guests based on the costs of their stays, provided they use a percentage of that money on tourism promotion efforts. Gainesville uses 12 percent of its tax revenues to fund the city’s Communications and Tourism Office and about 57 percent went to the Georgia Mountains Center budget last fiscal year.

Other cities in Hall give about 40 percent of the revenues they get from the tax to the Lake Lanier Convention and Visitors Bureau, an agency they’ve jointly contracted with to promote area tourism.

Like Gainesville, Flowery Branch officials, too, have seen a steady rise in hotel-motel tax revenue since approving the tax four years ago.

But unlike its northern neighbor, Flowery Branch has only one hotel, the Hampton Inn and Suites on Holland Dam Road.

The hotel’s business has steadily increased since the first full year Flowery Branch started taxing its guests 5 percent of the cost of their stays, according to numbers the city’s Finance Director Jeremy Perry provided.

In fiscal year 2010, the hotel brought in $56,052 in tourism tax revenues. Two years later, its revenues neared $94,953.

Oakwood hasn’t been so lucky.

The city manager there, Stan Brown, said the city’s revenues from the tax on tourists have gone in the opposite direction from Gainesville.

Two years ago, one of the city’s largest hotels, Country Inn & Suites, shuttered. Another independent hotel operator took over, but didn’t last long, Brown said. The city’s hotel inventory has been cut in half over the last five years, from four to two.

Oakwood charges 5 percent to each of the city’s hotel guests. In 2007, the city raked in $142,235 in revenues from the tax. Last year, the tax revenue didn’t even reach $59,500 — a drop of more than 58 percent, according to numbers the city provided.

Brown attributes the slump in the city’s hospitality industry to recent construction on the Interstate 985 interchange that leads motorists to the city.

“The median break was closed off,” Brown said. “And with the construction traffic, I think a lot of people just avoided that interchange.”

The timing of the construction lined up almost exactly with the economic recession.

“About the time the economy went south and the interchange project took place, we saw our (hotel-motel tax revenues) drop off,” Brown said. “And it really has yet to recover.”

About 40 percent of the city’s hotel-motel tax revenue goes to the Lake Lanier Convention and Visitors Bureau. The rest goes toward the city’s parks and recreation projects. As the tax revenue has decreased, Brown said the city has absorbed the lost revenue much like it did other revenue losses in recession-era budget planning.

But Brown has hope for the future. He says business at the Jameson Inn has picked up since Thurmon Tanner Parkway opened, and the building that once housed Country Inn & Suites will soon reopen as a Best Western Plus.

“We’re hopeful that will be a successful hotel,” Brown said.