The 14 Best Austin Luxury Hotels

Austin

Austin is one of the few American cities that can't be easily categorized. It's a state capital, a university town, a tech hub, and the self-declared live music capital of the world. Every March, Austin absorbs about 300,000 visitors for South by Southwest, and the city handles it with the same confidence as in 1987 for the first installment.

Across 10 days, more than 900 venues pull musicians, filmmakers, artists, and technologists into a collision that, at the right access level, feels less like a festival and more like a private city handed over to the most interesting people on the planet.

But Austin doesn't begin and end downtown. Thirty miles northwest, Lake Travis gives you access to 65 miles of shoreline, and the version of Austin that lives out here is quieter and much more private. Chartered yachts leave at sunset with the skyline behind them and nothing ahead but cedar bluffs and open water. The best luxury resorts in Austin have understood this split personality exceptionally well, placing themselves close enough to the action and far enough from the noise.

What holds it all together is a city that has never been entirely comfortable with its own fame. Austin grew faster than almost any other American city in the last two decades and argued with itself the whole way through.