The new 74-story tower on Rainey Street, slated to be the largest building in Texas, will house 1 Hotel Austin, a luxury property marketed toward some combination of cowboy and tech aficionado. 

On Monday, 1 Hotels announced it was building one of its luxury hotels in Austin, set to open in 2026. The announcement from S&H Hotels, the Los Angeles-based company that operates 1 Hotels, successfully completed new-build Austin bingo: it used the phrase "mixed-use," mentioned Austin City Limits, and claimed the 74-story tower in which it will reside will be the largest in Texas upon completion. 

Without delving into whether Austin needs a new, enormous downtown luxury hotel amid a housing crisis, or the vagueness of claiming a window into Austin City Limits (the festival, the downtown venue, or the television show?), the release was remarkable for its slurry of Austin-specific buzzwords and phrases. One in particular stands out.

Gaze upon this sentence in awe: "Texas-tough, modern-chic guest rooms feature furnishings that integrate cowboy craftsmanship with the sophisticated tone and tenor of a tech-savvy city."

This Mad Lib evokes, in order, a muddy Ford F-150, the incoming Hermès store on South Congress, Lonesome Dove, and Elon Musk and his various Central Texas concerns. It's a breathtaking journey, really.

Without invoking Webster's Dictionary, this is, of course, what marketing is: selling something to specific demographics using targeted images and phrases. Those indicators are meant to help Austinites and its regular visitors visualize a space in lieu of a rendering. But it also begs the question, who is that for? 

And on a broader scale, what does that mean about how brands sell themselves to — and in — Austin? Is this how the world sees our city now? 

Perhaps this is the ideal 1 Hotel Austin vacationer. 

For comparison, I looked at the PR language used for the new 1 Hotel in San Francisco, announced just five days ago. San Francisco is characterized as a "vibrant and eclectic city" that has "long been at the forefront of driving sustainable change in architecture and design."

Tackling the first phrase, this is PR-speak for the city's large LGBTQ population. More interesting for this exercise, though, when viewed through the lens of the city in which I reside, is the San Francisco release's repeated use of the words "design" and "architecture." 

San Francisco is, of course, a renowned American architectural city. Aside from longstanding icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco has a wealth of Victorian and modernist and Tudor structures that dot the city. It's no wonder the ad wizards who waved their wands over this release pushed this angle.

Taken holistically, this means that in selling the idea of San Francisco to potential customers — and to the city itself — the proprietors of Hotel 1 believe that what makes San Francisco unique is its standing as a diverse, outré, and architecturally beautiful city. Pretty simple.

Moving into Texas, I looked up a smattering of recent luxury hotel press releases for San Antonio, the closest metropolis to Austin. But even just an hour or so down I-35, the language is completely different. The big buzzword in selling luxury to San Antonio is "history," owing, of course, to the Alamo. 

"Guests will be inspired by The Otis Hotel San Antonio's historic influences," and the Thompson Hotel is busy "capturing the contemporary spirit of this historic Texas city," according to respective press releases. When selling luxury accommodations to San Antonio, it's important to convey that the Alamo exists. Again, this mostly makes sense. When thinking about our hotel, remember the Alamo.

It's more difficult to understand what the Austin release says and what the world thinks about our fair city. 

Rainey Street, re-arranging once again.

The only mention of design or architecture is at the release's footer, in which Hotel 1 describes itself as a purveyor of "sustainable design and architecture." Fair enough, as Austin isn't particularly known for its beautiful bridges or modernist towers, a kind way of putting it, to be sure.

And nowhere is history mentioned, except in describing Rainey Street, which, in all fairness, is technically a historic district but retains almost none of the history (or people) that made it so.

The Austin press release relies on some amalgamation of the low-brow and high-brow, like a bloomin' onion smothered in beluga caviar. Hotel 1 will slot right into Austin because it's macho, but fancy and expensive.

It's authentic like a cowboy but built for tech geeks. With this many inverses, it's impossible to extract any sort of definition of the city. Ten years ago, this press release would have hammered home "weirdness" and live blues. Today, Austin has too many identities to keep straight. 

This is not to say that any one type of person lives in Austin, or that marketers should cater to any one demographic. It's just that this press release reveals that nobody, not even those paid to define it, knows what Austin is in 2022. 

If you find the 6G bronc buster decked out in Celine and unlocking his Cyber Truck in Tarrytown, though, let me know.

Chris O'Connell covers all things Austin. He can be found @theechrisoc.