After 20 straight months of declining hotel tax collections, St. Mary Parish’s hotel industry saw a glimmer of hope in April. The parish’s hotel sales and use tax brought in $40,718, an increase of 1.1 percent from the $40,289 collected in the same month of the prior year, according to the monthly report. That slight rise in the hotel tax is the first monthly increase since July 2015 when collections rose 5 percent compared to July 2014. The greatest monthly decrease during the 20-month streak of declining hotel taxes was in May 2016 when collections fell 40.8 percent compared to the same ...