Apple adds 192-room hotel to site plans for $1B Austin campus

A rendering of Apple's planned $1 billion Austin campus, courtesy of the company.

For reasons as of yet unknown, Apple has added a 192-room hotel to its site plans for an under-construction $1 billion campus in Austin, Texas.

The Cupertino tech giant broke ground on its new Texas campus — a 3-million-square-foot site that is eventually set to house 15,000 employees in November 2019. But, new site plans have an unnamed third-party building a hotel on-site.

Apple introduced the new amenity in a revised site plan approved by by the City of Austin on April 29, local publication CultureMap reported. Original plans for the site, first submitted to the city in December 2018, didn't include a hotel.

John Boyd, a principal at location consulting firm The Boyd Co., told CultureMap that the proposed hotel plans are "another example" of Apple being ahead of the curve.

While "having a hotel connected at the hip with its corporate parent is not common now," Boyd added that he expects to see more of the concept from major tech companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft.

The new plans didn't name a specific hotel brand or company. Apple's planned Texas campus, set to open in 2022, is located close to the company's existing Austin facilities — where Apple's current 7,000 employees in the city current work and where U.S.-made Mac Pro models are manufactured.

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15 Comments

JinTech

said about 3 years ago

Probably for when people travel for business to the site they can just stay there. Would make more sense to control leaks too since everyone working there would be an Apple employee and would be under non-disclosure agreements. Curious what kind of food and beverage options they will have!

mpantone

said about 3 years ago

JinTech said:

Probably for when people travel for business to the site they can just stay there. Would make more sense to control leaks too since everyone working there would be an Apple employee and would be under non-disclosure agreements. Curious what kind of food and beverage options they will have!

The hotel employees would not be Apple employees. They would be working for a hotel management company in the same way that their cafeteria employees work for restaurant management companies, their gardeners work for landscape companies, their janitorial staff work for janitorial companies, etc.

Apple would however benefit by being able to offer preferential room rates to vendors and their own employees visiting from other locations.

It also provides conference facilities that could be booked preferentially for Apple for private events that Apple would rather not host on campus. These facilities could still be booked by the general public whereas an on-campus facility would not (e.g., wedding reception, corporate holiday party, arts & crafts fair). That’s actually the way hotels make the bulk of their profit (not rooms). If you call a hotel and ask to be connected to sales, you will be transferred to the banquet group.

A hotel would also generate transient occupancy taxes (a.k.a. hotel tax) as well as sales tax assuming Austin has such things. The hotel would also provide jobs for weekends whereas corporate facilities would be closed.

Hospitality is a low-margin industry so there is little financial incentive in making this a P&L center for Apple.