Downtown hotels full for SXSW

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Nearly all of the downtown Austin hotels are already booked.

More affordable rooms are still available, but they're farther out in Austin - or in nearby cities.

"More than anything we've seen we need more hotels in Austin," said SXSW Executive Director Mike Shea.
 
According to the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau there are 6,000 hotel rooms downtown and 30,000 citywide but, that's still not enough for South By Southwest.

Last year's registered attendance was 286,000.

"We've got probably the best hotel inventory we've ever had in the history of the city but with the growth of the events--it's just not keeping up," said Shea.

Shea says all parts of the festival continue to grow---interactive, film and music, but he says interactive is growing at a faster pace, meaning rooms get booked up sooner.

"The growth of interactive has been so explosive really. Last year for 2011 we had to announce all the hotels during interactive and film were sold out on February first.  This year we had to announce it was sold out on December first," said Shea.

People still looking for affordable places to stay must be resourceful.

"We tell people look for alternative accommodations, find a friend to stay with, find someone who's already got a hotel room, double up on a hotel room with somebody who's already coming. You can look online--these interactive people especially they know how to find stuff online," said Shea.

For many, finding accommodations requires looking in neighboring cities.
That means a lot of folks will skip naps to spend their days and nights at events downtown.
 
"We tell people you just don't have to sleep you've got the rest of your life to do that," said Shea.

SXSW organizers say when they first started it they chose March because a lot of people would leave for Spring Break and businesses would be less crowded.
   
Of course, now it's grown so much it's had the opposite affect and become a Spring Break destination.

The Convention and Visitors Bureau has a site to help people find accommodations.