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Apple adds 192-room hotel to plans of Northwest Austin campus
- dijit 6y agoMakes some amount of sense. I work for an international company that is small in comparison to Apple (15k employees) and Hotels for international travel are a pain. Having one on-site is probably going to save them some money in the long run.
- chrisseaton 6y agoWhat pains do you experience with hotels? I find they're the usually by far the easiest part of an international trip.
- dijit 6y agoNormally a mixture of: How close is it, what's the contiguous capacity of it, is it the cheapest, what is our relationship with it (payment methods, we prefer invoicing), does it require a down-payment to be paid by the traveller, if so how do we reimburse that. In contrast, flights are usually pretty easy; pick an flight and pay.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI have a feeling hotel payment modes are stuck in the 1980s because the franchisors (Hilton/Marriott/IHG/Hyatt/etc) don’t want to pay for any of the merchant processing or chargeback fees, so they don’t care about updating their payment platforms to make it easy for consumers. You can make a reservation at IHG.com with a fake credit card 4111 1111 1111 1111 and they do zero name/address/CVV verification, and the only reason I can tell is because they’re not the ones stuck with dealing with chargebacks and fees.
- dvtrn 6y ago$lastjob was for a software vendor adjacent to but servicing directly into the hospitality and service industries. Some of our clients included the names you mentioned; I can say from direct experience with three of them, they care a lot about their payment platforms and improving the tech associated, one of them, Marriott has an entire technical certification program that any tech vendor interested in doing business at a hotel with their name on it must go through. It’s just SLOW. Hoteliers “love” technology but they are damned SLOW to do anything with it sometimes (I don’t mean implementation here, there can be all sorts of reasons for implementation to take a long time, I mean the decision cycles from directors and executives of chains)
- dmitriid 6y agoHonestly, this makes a lot if sense. Any medium-to-large company will always need to book hotels for people traveling. At Apple's size it might be cheaper (and definitely more convenient) to operate their own hotel than to always look for ways to book and transport people around.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 6y ago>At Apple's size it might be cheaper (and definitely more convenient) to operate their own hotel Can be. Depends on the circumstances. There are the capital costs and then the company presumably outsources the running of the hotel to a hospitality company that needs to turn a profit on their management. In general, there's been a long-term trend away from companies owning corporate retreat properties, executive meeting centers, etc. A number of big old-line tech companies I'm familiar with sold off marquee properties over the past 2 or 3 decades. But if you're building a campus and there aren't great existing lodging options, it may make sense. They can presumably sell it off at some point if they don't want to own it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ideals 6y agoIt's safe to assume Apple will not be embracing a permanent shift to remote work. 2million sq/ft of glorious open floor plan seating.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 6y agoApple does not do open floor plans. At least not between departments From what I remember reading every department is closed off and some are only accessible to those with permission to enter.
- colde 6y agoThat used to be the case. But with the new Apple Park campus, they changed that significantly: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/10/apple-park-campus-employees-rebel-over-open-plan-offices-architecture-news/ https://www.dezeen.com/2017/08/10/apple-park-campus-employee... According to the article the hardware team managed to avoid it by complaining loud enough that they goy their own building.
- xyst 6y agoThe hardware team has their own space yet they produced garbage like the 2016-‘17 MBP. One of the many blunders: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find-cause-of-high-kernel-task-cpu-usage/363933#363933 https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/363337/how-to-find...
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoThis reminds me of the old SOE/school hotels in China. They generally provide less service than the dedicated hotels, and feel a bit archaic, but that might have just been the era.
- Theodores 6y agoThey could add a museum of Apple stuff so that true believers can go there on holiday. Disneyland for Apple enthusiasts would be a revenue earner, you could go there to buy new Apple goodies to spend quality time at the genius bar.
- saagarjha 6y agoNot a museum, but there’s an Apple Park Visitor Center where you can buy stuff.
- deugtniet 6y agoPerhaps this is partly driven by COVID. A hotel is a great isolation facility. Having one for essential staff would be a massive benefit if you need them close by at short notice.
- karlkatzke 6y agoTo add to the information in this story (because I live in the neighborhood), there aren’t a ton of hotel options nearby, and all of the hotel options nearby are along the non-toll road freeways and all require a drive or ride share.
- Scoundreller 6y agoAre the non-toll road freeways in really bad shape or?
- michaelbrave 6y agoaround Austin traffic is bad, it's not LA or NYC bad but it gets worse everyday. The most direct ways to get about and avoid some traffic is the toll roads, usually the alternative is the frontage roads that go alongside them (think a highway with regular lanes parallel with it). The road design and infrastructure was the most annoying part of Texas.
- kgermino 6y agoI was wondering why they specified as well. My guess: the toll roads have much less traffic (for their size) than the free ones. I know that by me the toll is usually worth it if you value your time at all since the dedicated funding gives them the money to maintain and expand the road as needed.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 6y agoYeah, the major toll roads in Austin are essentially empty enough that you never have to go below the speed limit. The campuses are off Parmer Ln, which isn’t in bad shape, it’s actually a pretty decent divided highway with 3 lanes on either side, but it’s not walkable or bikable at all and there are a ton of traffic lights.
- SilasX 6y agoI go up Parmer a lot to see my parents and I definitely see cyclists all the time. Maybe not ideal but it has a clear bike lane and it's enough that people actually use it. Not walkable? That part's accurate though.
- angled 6y agoI expect several airlines have something similar already - Cathay Pacific operates its own on-campus hotel for crew based elsewhere: https://www.headland.com.hk/ https://www.headland.com.hk/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- PaulWaldman 6y agoIt is also quite common for universities to have hotels on campus.
- vidanay 6y agoYeah, but they are almost always affiliated with a hospitality/hotel management degree program.
- txcwpalpha 6y agoThe hotel on campus at UT Austin isn’t affiliated with any such program. It’s actually affiliated with the business school, AFAIK, and the circumstances around it’s creation sound similar to Apple’s. At the time, there weren’t many good hotel options around that part of Austin unless you were willing to stay in a motel or a long drive away. I imagine this was a big obstacle when trying to attract MBA students to the weekend MBA programs (where the students are put up at a hotel every weekend) or trying to get business bigwigs to visit campus for events, so UT just decided to build their own hotel.
- ape4 6y agoI can only hope everything in the room has a macOS GUI
- Austin_Conlon 6y agomacOS cannot verify the developer of “Room Service.” Are you sure you want to open it?
- checker659 6y agoCalls apple servers before letting water out of the tap...
- petepete 6y agoI'd hate to stay in a hotel room with no Windows.
- cardinalfang 6y agoIt would be a Doss-house.
- BubRoss 6y agoIf you forget your iTunes password you have to book a new room.
- drewg123 6y agoSAS, in Cary NC, also has a hotel on campus. The only other options require crossing a busy 6+ lane street where pedestrians are uncommon.
- brnt 6y agoNobody thought of a pedestrian bridge/tunnel?
- aquaticsunset 6y agoThat area is a huge car culture city. You’re lucky if these major roads even have sidewalks.
- cpach 6y agoFor someone living in Europe, this seems slightly surreal :-p
- pentae 6y agoYou might have a bit of a shock in SE Asia then
- cpach 6y agoI’ve never been there unfortunately. How is the car culture there? How does the people without cars get by?
- ghaff 6y agoScooters/motorbikes (not the e-scooters you stand on). There are also various degrees of public transit. But, while there are some exceptions like Singapore, a lot of large SE Asian cities are congested sprawl that takes forever to get around.
- ghaff 6y ago
- harmmonica 6y agoThis is interesting because Apple's Austin campus is a good distance from the neighborhoods in Austin most people want to hang out/go out/be in. This is one of those things that's far from categorical, as evidenced by other comments in the thread where people appreciate being close to the office when having to travel for work, but I personally, and people of my ilk, like exploring the places we visit when traveling for work and this hotel will make exploring much more inconvenient. Maybe that's even Apple's goal...
- machello13 6y agoIt seems really odd to suggest that Apple is placing their hotel near their own campus in order to somehow prevent employees from having fun. Why in the world would a company put a hotel far from their office? It's not like everyone won't have a rental car or access to Uber anyway.
- harmmonica 6y agoI guess I'm odd, or I wasn't suggesting they'd place a hotel somewhere else just that they're adding one at all in that location given the lack of amenities/points of interest/etc., which is one of the few perks of business travel. That said, I'll stand down completely on my knee-jerk comment on this because if you take the total visitors to Apple's Austin campus, some of those folks would not want to stay where the action is and so, to your point, the ones who want action can take an Uber. Everyone wins in that case, I suppose. Also, if you don't think someone at Apple brought up the benefit of the hotel being at the campus itself and how that might factor into productivity you're less cynical about corporate America than I am (not a stretch; I'm pretty cynical).
- bredren 6y agoPerhaps interesting parts will develop as a result of the placement. Tony Hsieh sort of did this in Vegas.
- harmmonica 6y agoYeah, I think you're right. Totally possible and likely. And like I wrote in another reply Covid may make the "suburbs" everywhere a lot more interesting. That said, not sure the suburbanites want my personal version of "interesting" because I think the suburbs are the way they are because the people who live there like them that way.
- punnerud 6y agoSimilar to CERN where they have hotels within the campus. Only difference is that while working at CERN you don’t pay tax on your earnings, spending, car etc.
- iancmceachern 6y agoFermilab too, I've stayed at their hotel working on their collider.
- waiwai933 6y ago> He cites an Embassy Suites hotel as a possibility. I'd have expected it to be open to Apple employees/contractors/guests travelling on official Apple business, and thus wouldn't carry a chain brand.
- vidanay 6y agoConversely, I'd expect it to be licensed out to a renewable operational contract by a major chain who has the experience and domain skills to run a hotel. If they don't meet Apple standards, they can be dropped at the end of the contract.
- waiwai933 6y agoI'd have thought they could get a chain to run it, but using custom Apple branding. Similarly, they could probably pay the chain/management company a flat fee/fee based on performance standards, rather than letting them do market pricing.
- sjwright 6y agoIt won’t be Apple branded. More likely a generic brand, or something that’s linked to Apple without using the name. Like how their campus cafe is Caffé Macs. (Best hotel name I can come up with is “Energy Saver” in the style of macOS System Preferences. Cute, and comes with a free logo. But I doubt the Apple of today would dare to be so whimsical.)
- namdnay 6y agoYes, just like cafeterias etc
- briandear 6y agoApple cafeterias aren’t licensed out. The people working there are Apple employees.
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- PanMan 6y agoI work for a small hotel chain, and have often joked about the tech stack if apple would run a hotel (with no legacy)... Time to see how it will actually look! (Although I guess they'll outsource the management to a hotel chain)
- closeparen 6y agoIt's been mentioned on HN previously that Apple's internal/back office stuff is cheaply outsourced and nowhere near the level of its consumer products.
- ghaff 6y agoVaguely amusing related story. During the 2000s, I stayed at the IBM executive meeting center in Palisades NY. It was managed by some hospitality company or other but it was very IBM branded (lots of old tech displays, etc.) It also definitely had legacy IBM tech. This was before WiFi really took off and the guest rooms all had Token Ring. Which, as I recall, necessitated warning stickers all over the place because you'd fry your Ethernet if you tried to plug in. At some point, I think they redid it but then they offloaded the facility.
- dhosek 6y agoMcDonald's has a hotel on its corporate headquarters campus in Oak Brook. It's run by Hyatt and anyone can book rooms there (we've done a couple "staycations" there in the winter to be able to have a weekend where we can avoid Chicago cold/stay inside the whole time and have access to a swimming pool). I'd guess a large fraction of the business comes from people attending meetings at corporate or training at Hamburger U, but they also host typical hotel things like non-McDonald's conferences and weddings etc. Most, but not all, of the hallway art has a McDonald's theme.
- walshemj 6y agoA lot of big companies do the PO built accommodation blocks at Bletchley Park - as that site was used for a lot of training after the GPO took BP over post world war 2
- qppo 6y agoFormer* headquarters and campus. They began demolishing it a few months ago. No idea what happened to the hotel.
- colmmacc 6y agoBoeing has Hilton Garden Inns hotels right at Everett field where the wide-bodies are made, and in Renton where the 737s are made. They're a sight to see because they seem very very out of place. But they do a steady trade in Boeing attendees coming in for training, as well as customers coming to negotiate, inspect, and pickup new planes. I got to play a private party in the Everett one, to celebrate a new plane delivery for a customer. The staff told they once had a super-rich Emir book out a whole floor and stay there for a few days while a private jumbo was being delivered. The idea of that happening at a garden inn amuses me.
- dangus 6y agoNot directly related to the topic, but this is the first time I’ve seen renders of this new campus and it surprises me that it’s so car-dependent and suburban. It kind of disappoints me especially from a company publicly emphasizing environmental responsibility. That same aspect really surprised me about Apple Park: how the building is so futuristic, but then getting there requires you hop in your regressive oil-burning couch on wheels. Personally, I would never again work for a company that made me drive down a highway to a giant parking garage complex. I want transit-oriented development and I want to live and work near transit lines, in walkable areas with mixed-use amenities. If my choices in 2020 are remote work, suburban car commute, or downtown city office commute watching YouTube on a bus or train, one of these options is the clear last-place option. My parents told me an anecdote of how they recently drove to the center of town (the old part built for walking) just to get out and walk around, as if this is a normal and not-insane byproduct of our misguided city planning. Their home is so isolated and pedestrian-hostile that they have to drive a vehicle just to find somewhere pleasant to exist. (The same story goes for getting to a park or outdoor recreation area) Suburbs have all the downsides of a city with none of the upsides of rural life. Obviously, it’s not Apple’s fault that most American cities happened to make massive city planning mistakes after World War II. But it seems like so many of those mistakes continue to be perpetuated by all parties involved.
- ghaff 6y ago>If my choices in 2020 are remote work, suburban car commute, or downtown city office commute watching YouTube on a bus or train, one of these options is the clear last-place option. It depends where you live. If I drive into my company's suburban office (which I have rarely done for the past few years), I'm about a 25-30 minute drive. If I take the commuter rail into the city to go to another office, I'm about 90 minutes door-to-door between drive to train/train/subway/walk. I don't mind doing the latter now and then, but if I had to make the choice most days, that wouldn't be my pick. I did commute into the city semi-regularly for about a year once. It really wasn't sustainable over a long period even though I didn't need to do it every day most weeks.
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- gumby 6y ago> 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,” It’s quite common in some countries for companies and other institutions hotels or guest houses on site, especially when ravel is difficult. And even when not it’s very typical for companies to have a with local hotels for their visitors. This is just another case of wiggling the dividing line between in-house/outsourcing that companies do with fungible tasks like cafeterias, cleaning, call center etc.
- adrianmonk 6y agoAustin has a lot of events where all the hotels are all booked up. Presumably Apple can give reservation priority to its guests. The headaches saved from that alone could make this worthwhile. Austin is a decent-sized city but not a particularly large one, so hotel capacity isn't huge. And there's SXSW, Austin City Limits music festival, a Formula 1 track, the Republic of Texas biker rally (200,000 attendees). Not to mention graduation weekend for the University of Texas, which is a big campus with over 50,000 enrolled.
- alttab 6y agoI wonder how many of those events will still occur, and how long it will take them to reach those crowd sizes again.
- fma 6y agoThe General Motors headquarters, "Ren Cen" has a 73 floor Marriott Hotel tower with ~1,300 rooms in the middle. You can access all 7 of the towers w/o going outside. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Center
- ikeyany 6y agoHaving stayed at that hotel last year, those elevators seriously need an upgrade.
- kevindong 6y agoFor large corporations expecting a lot of inter-office travel, it makes a lot of sense. I assume the company owns the hotel and therefore has first dibs on rooms and pays minimal costs to whomever ultimately operates the hotel. I interned at a company with 50k employees that's redeveloping their HQ campus. The redevelopment includes a fairly large hotel on site because the company has a decent amount of business travelers coming/going every day. The main office building currently has a room dedicated to storing luggage for employees traveling.
- dehrmann 6y agoUgh. At a former job, I worked in a satellite office. At one point, I spent three weeks at the main office, embedding with another team. The office was connected to a hotel I stayed at. The room, an apartment room with a kitchenette and, inexplicably, two bathrooms, while nice, overlooked the office. I'd get off work, go to my room, and see teams' dashboards on TVs from my window. For three weeks. I tried to avoid that hotel for the rest of my time there. Worth mentioning that unlike Apple's Austin campus, this was in a central district in a major city, so there wasn't a big compromise between a fun neighborhood and being close to the office.
- yitchelle 6y agoSeparation of life between work and non-work is really important, especially if long term mental health is concern. Personally, I would burned out really fast in this scenario. This is the pressure I felt when I go on week long business trips where days are spent in the office, and night are spent preparation for the next day.
- rektide 6y agoThe simple boring & likely option is that this is a matter of convenience, to help visitors &c. The cool option, the unlikely one, is that this would also be a technological testbed for a well integrated technical living space. A modest small go at a lab, to try out how we might integrate computing & living. As I said: unlikely. ;)