How will the convention center project impact Austin's economy?
AUSTIN (KXAN) – The old Austin Convention Center is almost halfway demolished, and the new one won’t be available for events until 2029. While Austin will lack a large convention space for the next few years, the city has a plan to maintain tourism in its absence.
The Austin City Council approved a Tourism Public Improvement District, TPID, on March 27 to ensure the city doesn’t lose valuable tourism revenue while the new convention center is being built. TPID created a 2% nightly fee on most Austin hotel rooms, which will generate millions of dollars to incentivize and market tourism and business travel in Austin.
“We lost business in the past; this new building is going to allow us to do a 9,000-9,500 general session,” said Visit Austin CEO and President Tom Noonan. “We couldn’t do that in the old building unless we took three exhibit halls down.”
That fee could rake in $29.7 million in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, according to reporting from the Austin Business Journal. TPID-generated funds won’t be available until the fall, and Noonan said the money will be spent in the following ways:
- 60% for Austin marketing and sales
- 20% for incentivizing business at the future convention center
- 10% for the hotel incentives
- 10% for research and TPID administrative costs
The marketing and sales budget will be used to create evergreen advertising campaigns, intended to maintain tourism revenue in Austin during construction. Noonan said TPID will increase Visit Austin’s capacity to market the city, even beyond the project.
“We’re always going to be advertising Austin going forward, and that really helps with [hotel occupancy],” Noonan said.
Noonan said TPID’s hotel incentive program launched earlier this month.
“We’re really excited about that,” he said. “When hotels are working on a piece of business, they can contact the TPID board and say, ‘I have this opportunity. Can I see some dollars if we book it?’”
The new center will cost $1.6 billion and will nearly double the rentable square footage of the former facility, increasing from 365,000 square feet to 620,000 square feet of space, according to a release from the city in February.
Noonan said the new convention center will be the 35th largest in the U.S. – a major jump from the former one, which was the 65th. Additionally, the new facility will be the world’s first zero-carbon-certified convention center. Steel and concrete will be recycled from the original building, Noonan said.
