Austin is ready to take on more conventions, but needs more rooms first
Photo Credit: Congress Street Bridge leads into downtown Austin at sunset. Flickr / Ed Schipul
Skift Take
Anyone whose been to Austin for its massive festivals knows the room crunch, and even services such as Airbnb and Homeaway can't fit all the people.
The Austin area is in line for more than a dozen hotels in the next two to three years, potentially putting an end to a shortage of rooms that tourism officials say has kept the city from landing many lucrative conventions in recent years.
Combined, the hotels could make 4,000 or more additional rooms available for out-of-towners, also easing space crunches that occur during the Austin City Limits Music Festival, South by Southwest, Formula 1 events and University of Texas football games.
The city currently has about 30,000 rooms, according to figures from the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau, while nearby San Antonio, a longtime favorite of event planners, has an estimated 40,000 rooms.
Convention and Visitors Bureau officials have for years said Austin has been missing out on larger convention groups because it had only one convention-size hotel, the 800-room Hilton Austin. Among the new hotel projects in the works are two 1,000-room convention hotels affiliated with hi
