About Hotels Austin

Hotels Austin is an independent travel guide for visitors to Austin, Texas. We are not owned by a hotel group, a booking site, or a tourism board, and no property pays to appear here. This page explains who writes the site, how the research is actually done, and how we make money, so you can judge how much weight to give what you read.

Who Writes This Site

Articles on Hotels Austin carry the byline Jake Sullivan. That is a pen name, used consistently across the site so there is a single editorial voice, and used for privacy rather than to imply a particular person’s credentials. We think you should know that up front rather than find it out later.

What that means in practice is simple. Our guides are researched and compiled, not written up from a diary of personal stays. Where a page tells you something specific, such as how late a bar district is licensed to run amplified music or which side of a building faces the railway, that came from a verifiable source, and we would rather show you the source than ask you to trust a claim about who slept where.

How We Research

Every page is built from the same four inputs.

1. Property and operator information. Room counts, amenities, policies, and rates come from the hotels themselves and from the booking platforms that list them. We check the property is currently open and trading under the name we use.
2. Official public sources. Anything about the city rather than the hotel comes from primary records. City of Austin ordinances and sound permit rules, TxDOT project schedules, CapMetro service information, venue calendars, and published event dates. These are the details that decide whether a stay is good, and they are checkable.
3. Guest feedback at scale. We read across large volumes of published guest reviews to find the patterns a single stay would miss, such as a recurring complaint about a particular floor or a consistent gap between the photographs and the room.
4. Location analysis. Distances, walking times, and what actually sits next door are worked out from maps and public records rather than repeated from marketing copy.

What We Do Not Do

• We do not claim first-hand stays we cannot stand behind.
• We do not review hotels that have not opened. If a property is announced but not yet trading, we will say so plainly or leave it off the site.
• We do not accept payment, free stays, or gifts in exchange for coverage or for a better placement.
• We do not publish invented guest quotes or ratings.

Keeping Pages Current

Austin changes quickly, and hotels change hands, rebrand, and close. Kimber Modern on South Congress is now Frame Hotel Treehouse, and the South Congress Hotel is due to become The Standard. We re-check properties and update pages when we find drift, and pages carry a date so you can see how fresh the information is. If a page looks out of date to you, it probably is, and we would like to know.

Corrections

We would rather be corrected than be wrong. If you spot an error, a closed property, a changed policy, or a price that no longer resembles reality, email hello@hotels-austin.com and we will check it and fix the page. Corrections are made to the page itself rather than quietly dropped.

How We Make Money

Hotels Austin is free to read, and it is funded two ways. Some pages carry advertising. Some pages carry affiliate links to booking sites, primarily Booking.com through Commission Junction, and we earn a commission if you book after following one. That commission costs you nothing extra, and the price is the same as booking direct.

Affiliate links do not decide what we recommend or what order things appear in. Several hotels we rate highly are small independents that pay us little or nothing, and we include honest drawbacks alongside the positives because a recommendation you cannot trust is worth nothing to either of us.

What We Cover

• Hotels. Reviews of individual properties, plus curated lists by category including luxury, budget, romantic, family, and boutique.
• Neighbourhoods. Where to stay based on what you want to do, from downtown nightlife to quiet South Austin retreats.
• Dining. Austin restaurants by category, including BBQ, tacos, sushi, fine dining, brunch, and cocktail bars.
• Events. Hotel guides for SXSW, ACL Festival, Formula 1, UT football, and other major Austin events.
• Practical guides. The things that catch visitors out, such as downtown parking, being towed, toll roads, cedar fever, and hotel noise.

Contact

Questions, corrections, and suggestions all go to hello@hotels-austin.com. If you own or manage a property and think it belongs on the site, you are welcome to get in touch, though coverage is not for sale and being in touch does not buy a recommendation.

Last updated August 2026