3 ms·

They're already written off SF decades ago, has no one ever stayed at the Whitcomb?! SF has some of the worst hotels I've seen anywhere. So much hasn't been up

by buro9 3y ago

They're already written off SF decades ago, has no one ever stayed at the Whitcomb?! SF has some of the worst hotels I've seen anywhere. So much hasn't been updated for decades and it definitely shows.

0xbadcafebee 3y ago
I've stayed in several 4-stars in SF in the past two years, and while none were bad, they are clearly still suffering from staffing issues and spreading things thinly due to fewer bookings. If you have a choice to stay in SF or somewhere else, somewhere else is usually nicer. Crime and homelessness has turned SF from that quaint city by the bay, to that quaint city you don't feel safe walking around in. With the loss of convention tourism and the slow erosion of the SV gravy train there's zero reason left to invest in SF. Expect the decline to continue unabated. I bet in 10 years SF will once again be an affordable place to live.
draw_down 3y ago
[dead]
rsynnott 3y ago
That's arguably actually a sign of a hot hotel market; if any room will rent, then, really, why bother updating anything? (Caveat: in many European cities with very hot hotel markets, you'll see a lot of shiny new hotel rooms, but it's largely because hotels are redesigning themselves to put more rooms in the same space. This seems way less common in the US; I think Americans are way more bothered about how big the rooms are.) Of course, covid disrupted that to an extent, particularly for cities which were heavily reliant on business travel for their hotel business (I'd be a little surprised if business travel _ever_ returns to pre-covid rates). I'm in SF occasionally for work, and, yeah, the hotels are notably, almost impressively, dated. Beyond the presence of the obligatory flatscreen TV, most of the rooms probably looked much the same in the 80s. If the market actually _is_ cooling down severely (based on the article, one could be forgiven for thinking this is more a case of a company abruptly discovering that property values don't automatically go up forever, which is a lesson that property investors tend to learn every couple of decades) then you'd actually expect that to change, as hotels have to compete on the product being offered rather than just taking a "look, here's a room, there are no rooms, obviously you will rent it" approach.

by buro9 3y ago

0xbadcafebee 3y ago

I've stayed in several 4-stars in SF in the past two years, and while none were bad, they are clearly still suffering from staffing issues and spreading things thinly due to fewer bookings. If you have a choice to stay in SF or somewhere else, somewhere else is usually nicer. Crime and homelessness has turned SF from that quaint city by the bay, to that quaint city you don't feel safe walking around in. With the loss of convention tourism and the slow erosion of the SV gravy train there's zero reason left to invest in SF. Expect the decline to continue unabated. I bet in 10 years SF will once again be an affordable place to live.

draw_down 3y ago

[dead]

rsynnott 3y ago

That's arguably actually a sign of a hot hotel market; if any room will rent, then, really, why bother updating anything? (Caveat: in many European cities with very hot hotel markets, you'll see a lot of shiny new hotel rooms, but it's largely because hotels are redesigning themselves to put more rooms in the same space. This seems way less common in the US; I think Americans are way more bothered about how big the rooms are.) Of course, covid disrupted that to an extent, particularly for cities which were heavily reliant on business travel for their hotel business (I'd be a little surprised if business travel _ever_ returns to pre-covid rates). I'm in SF occasionally for work, and, yeah, the hotels are notably, almost impressively, dated. Beyond the presence of the obligatory flatscreen TV, most of the rooms probably looked much the same in the 80s. If the market actually _is_ cooling down severely (based on the article, one could be forgiven for thinking this is more a case of a company abruptly discovering that property values don't automatically go up forever, which is a lesson that property investors tend to learn every couple of decades) then you'd actually expect that to change, as hotels have to compete on the product being offered rather than just taking a "look, here's a room, there are no rooms, obviously you will rent it" approach.