[austlar1]

I've watched every conceivable kind of hotel sprout up in central Austin in the past five or 6 years. I was already convinced (pre covid 19) that the market was overbuilt. The demand was almost all coming from visitor, festival, and convention related travel. Business travel to downtown Austin can probably be comfortably accommodated with fewer than 5,000 rooms. That figure was exceeded several years ago, and there are new hotels still under construction or in the pipeline. I truly believe all this was a bubble waiting to burst, and something similar has been happening in a host of other US cities outside of NY. I think there may be a new paradigm in the works for the hotel industry moving forward. The demand for business travel may never quite be the same (tele-conferencing), and the era of quick fly-away weekends and frequent festival/convention attendance may be on the wane post pandemic. The economy is shaky. Businesses are going to be pinching pennies and looking hard at travel expenses. Discretionary income will be greatly reduced for many others. International flights and travel will be slow to resume, especially in secondary markets. Austin lost all 3 or 4 TATL flights in this pandemic, and I don't think they will resume this year or possibly even next year. The hotel industry is going to shrink.