CultureMap reports that Apple has added a new amenity to its corporate campus under construction in northwest Austin, Texas — a 192-room hotel.
In November 2019 Apple broke ground on the $1 billion, 3-million-square-foot campus. The campus will initially house 5,000 employees, with the capacity to grow to 15,000, and is expected to open in 2022.
Apple says it’s steadily growing in Austin with approximately 7,000 employees in the city — more than a 50% increase in the past five years alone. As part of its commitment to respecting the historical and geographical significance of the area, Apple is partnering with Austin-based Bartlett Tree Experts to preserve and increase the diversity of native trees on the 133-acre property.
A revised site plan approved April 29 by the City of Austin shows a 75,500-square-foot, six-story hotel, as well as previously envisioned office buildings and parking garages. The revised plan doesn’t cite a hotel brand. The original site plan for the project, filed in December 2018, didn’t include a hotel.
“Apple is a trendsetter in so many ways. Its proposed hotel as part of its new Austin campus is another example of it being ahead of the curve,” John Boyd Jr., principal of Princeton, New Jersey-based corporate location consulting firm The Boyd Co. Inc., tells CultureMap. “Having a hotel connected at the hip with its corporate parent is not common now, but in the post-COVID-19 corporate travel world, I expect we will be seeing more of this concept, especially from deep-pocketed tech firms like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft.”
