The Best Spa Hotels in Downtown Austin, Texas

With an enormous rooftop pool, burger bar and pizza restaurant, Austin’s Marriott is all about life’s little pleasures – and the greatest pleasure of all is its little urban spa, done up in sultry shades of charcoal and blue. Get your sweat on in the high-rise gym with floor-to-ceiling windows, then let loose in the heated pool, where bar service and private cabanas with speakers and TVs attract twentysomethings at the weekend.

This Downtown design hotel has character in spades, from the bright embroidered headboards, peacock-blue shower tiles and leopard print rugs in wildly distinctive suites, to the mismatched velvet furniture and flourishing pot plants in the Group Therapy bar. And its ZaSpa is just as quirky – the Lights, Collagen, Action facial gets you camera-ready, while the Morning After scrub aims to revive you post-party. In summer, the rooftop pool glams up your morning lengths with its striped canopy and chandeliers.

The W brand reliably invests in head-turning communal spaces and decadent bars and restaurants, so this is the place to party by the vast rooftop pool (ready with its bright orange unbreakable cups) and sip nightcaps in the firelit Living Room, adorned with 8,000 vinyl records. When you need to relax, it’s off to the hyper-modern AWAY Spa for a rock’n’roll-themed treatment: try the Willie Nelson inspired, full-body-repair On the Road Again.

This hip, affordable stay is a breath of fresh air, with comfy fireside seating beside its rooftop pool, and an elegant lobby lounge with stacks of logs and tan-and-teal sofas. As well as improving your front crawl on the coveted rooftop, you can book a treatment in your hotel room; therapists use the flower power Kerstin Florian range, packed with lavender, algae or peppermint, depending on your mood.

Austin’s Four Seasons is a greenery-wrapped grand design overlooking Lady Bird Lake; as well as pebble-smooth, minimalist rooms facing the expanse of nature outside, there are activities and restaurant areas to tempt you outdoors. Go kayaking or paddleboarding on the lake (if you’re not tempted by the state-of-the-art indoor gym) and swim in the saltwater pool. Then treat yourself to an afternoon in its luxe but earthy spa, where the outdoors comes in courtesy of river-stone massages and locally picked sage.

Close to the city’s nightlife-packed Sixth Street, the Hilton is a conference favorite with surprisingly tempting restaurants and facilities. Your room may be a basic white cube with minimal frills, but nip downstairs and you’ll find zingy street food at Austin Taco Project; upstairs you’ll find an al fresco pool with light bulbs strung overhead, and its cozy Skyline Spa. Take a breath in its eucalyptus-infused steam room before your treatment, be it a hot-stone massage or a Moroccan pumice stone scrub.

The Fairmont’s enormous, canoe-shaped swimming pool is a dazzler; it’s a resort-style terrace with loungers and palm trees is the big draw for holidaymakers who want to do some kicking back as well as sightseeing. The indoor gym and spa has a tiled hot tub, window-side exercise bikes for city views, and a herbal steam room and dry sauna. Chic cream rooms come with addictive smellies from hip perfumer Le Labo.

This California brand was started by a star interior designer, with the aim to dig into local style in every US property. For Austin, that means lots of woven fabrics in dusty Southern colours, ceramics and wood furniture by local artisans, and just a touch of cowboy swagger, as well as rows of sentry-like cacti beside the rooftop pool. If you’re not lounging on plush striped recliners by one of its two tranquil pools, you should be booking a holistic ritual in its city spa.