The Austin Convention Center will close next year for a four-year renovation project, but the city’s hotels—and hotel management companies—are not giving up that valuable citywide business without a fight.
One significant player, White Lodging Hospitality, is getting the word out that that its 11 Austin hotels are ready to work together to book large-scale events. While each property has its own sales teams, those teams will work together through White Lodging to simplify multi-venue bookings for a single convention or trade show.
And while ease of booking is key, the strength of White Lodging’s story is the proximity of its properties to one another, creating an almost campus-like feel downtown. The company’s largest property, the 1,012-room JW Marriott Austin, is just a four-minute walk from the 613-room Austin Marriott Downtown—a shorter trip than walking from one end of the Austin Convention Center to the other.
The JW Marriott has 115,609 square feet of event space, including a purpose-built exhibit space and two ballrooms, while the Austin Marriott has an additional 64,000 square feet. Those meeting hubs can be supported by other nearby White Lodging properties, bringing its total number of downtown hotel rooms to 2,958: the 296-room Hyatt Place Austin Downtown, 366-room Westin Austin Downtown, dual-branded Aloft Austin Downtown and Element Austin Downtown with 422 rooms combined, and dual-branded Courtyard and Residence Inn properties with 449 rooms combined.
White Lodging’s three other Austin properties are the 162-room Moxy Austin University and the dual-branded AC Hotel Austin University and The Otis Hotel Austin with 347 rooms. These are a 10-minute drive from the downtown properties.
Also making a play to host citywides once the convention center closes is the Red River Collection, with three hotels on the east side of the convention center— Fairmont Austin, Hilton Austin, and Hotel Van Zandt—that together offer 2,168 hotel rooms and 245,000 square feet of meeting and event space.
