AUSTIN -- A hotel room can be hard to come by during a busy weekend like F1, but a group of hotels now under construction promises thousands of added rooms in the coming years.
The Fairmont Austin will open in 2017, offering more than 1,000 hotel rooms to visitors. It's just one of several hotels under construction just within a few blocks off Caesar Chavez, meaning more space for visitors and more customers for downtown businesses
"We tried to book my hotel back in July, the early week of July, and nothing was available," said visitor Nneka Sederstrom.
Hotel occupancy stays steady at nearly 80 percent year round, according to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. During F1 weekend rooms are more than 90 percent occupied citywide.
"I had colleagues that had to go all the way across town because they didn't have any space," Sederstrom said.
In the coming years, if all projects go as planned, 3,500 rooms will open up.
"We're pretty excited about having just so much development right in our area. It's been 36 years really of not having much down here," said Iron Works Barbecue manager Aaron Morris.
When Morris' family opened Iron Works in 1978, on Caesar Chavez and Red River, all that surrounded the restaurant was a car dealership and an ice cream manufacturing plant.
"This was actually a little bit of a seedy neighborhood in the late '70s and most of the '80s," he said.
Then came The Convention Center and Rainey Street.
"We're about to approach the next phase which is having a luxury hotel right across the street," he said.
The Fairmont Austin will reach 37 stories high directly across from Iron Works. Just around the corner Hotel Van Zandt is under construction. On East 5th another luxury hotel, The Westin, will open in June. And a few blocks behind Iron Works, the 34-story JW Marriott towers overhead. It opens in February. Rooms are already booked for SXSW in March.
"With the historic building here we kind of feel like sometimes we're an ambassador for the State of Texas and Austin," Morris said.
Morris expects the new hotels will bring quite a bit more business from around the world and they're up to the challenge.
"We want to really represent our state well and our city well."
Construction on the Fairmont is expected to begin next week.
We called several hotels to see if any are even available for the coming weekend and of the five we called, each had a couple of rooms available, most though at double to triple the normal fee.
