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Originally Posted by MightyYoda
Reading the tea leaves, it sounds more than anything like they are giving a ~year of space between the opening of the Marriott and the Fairmont.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndic
Where are you getting that idea?
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He's getting that idea from the article which states:
A short distance away at Red River and Cesar Chavez streets, Manchester Texas Financial Group LLC is planning to break ground in October on the Fairmont Austin, a 50-story, 1,000-room hotel that will be the second highest building in the city behind The Austonian condominiums.
It’s scheduled to open in June 2016, about a year after the 34-story, 1,000-room JW Marriott is delivered.
I personally think that's a good plan. Look at all the condos that have been built downtown. They weren't completed all at the same time. They had staggered opening dates so the market would have time to absorb all the units. I think if you had two huge convention center hotels open within months of each other, it would be too many rooms all at once.
And for the pessimists in this thread (not you, Syndic) I also liked Manchester's comments about Austin at the end of the article:
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He [Doug Manchester]wants to see a major push to develop the Austin Convention Center into a more viable product that could vie against such popular convention towns as San Diego, where his company was started.
“I’d like to champion that,” Manchester said.
He said he likes the dynamics of the Austin market, given that it has one of the highest rates of occupancy for Saturday nights. Most cities see a dramatic drop in hotel occupancy on the weekends.
“The reason we are here is that we saw the incredible potential of Austin,” Manchester said.
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