13 ms·
San Francisco Hotels Are World’s Priciest as Rates Surge
- paulhauggis 11y agoIt's not expensive, it's 'progressive'
- newman314 11y ago"Surge" pricing. FTFY. =)
- capkutay 11y agoWhy build hotels for the rich when SF can have miles of abandoned warehouses for the destitute?
- marincounty 11y agoSan Francisco is a union city. They do a lot of building. Too much in my opinion; San Francisco is a small city. I don't think there's a shortage of hotels in San Fancisco? Even in Bubbles(like SF is currently experiencing), I have seen high end hotels leave rooms sit empty. I worked at the Fairmont during one of these booms, and they didn't budge on prices--they just left rooms empty. The twins just didn't need the money? Now shelters for the homeless are another story. SF is one of those city's you can really end up homeless--really fast. Maybe faster than NY? Rents have skyrocketed in SF, and the Bay Area these last few years. I have never seen anything quite like this?
- capkutay 11y ago90% of the city is zoned for 4 story buildings. Almost every development proposal gets shortened for whatever reason. Areas that lend well to being urban, dense hubs for high rise offices/hotels/residential buildings like Central SOMA are zoned for 4 story buildings. It makes no sense.
- droithomme 11y agoI stay at these places when I'm in town. http://www.sfhostels.org/ http://www.sfhostels.org/
- fennecfoxen 11y agoI prefer https://www.airbnb.com/ https://www.airbnb.com/ myself, it's sort of in between :P
- dopamean 11y agoWhat is this airbnb.com thing?
- justizin 11y agoThanks, I mean, why would anyone build hotels and employ union workers when they can just convert housing to hotels? </rant>
- fennecfoxen 11y agoExactly. Why pay for more capital and labor expenses to convert existing productive real estate into a generic, anodyne hotel experience with amenities like daily housekeeping service that I don't need? One that's probably located in the tourist-trap district? Instead, I can utilize existing capital more efficiently and enjoy myself in a real part of San Francisco designed for actual human beings, and spend the savings on something more relevant to my interests (like more frequent travel). Almost certainly this means more profits going to local businesses -- and to the homeowner as well, who is more likely to spend them locally than HotelCorp. Granted, there are some contract issues if the host rents the apartment instead of owning it, and there is a risk of some externalities (chronic noisy guests upsetting neighbors) which could be managed with light regulation... but surely the idea is a sound one which should be embraced and encouraged. Right? And those would-be unionized hotel employees would be there to do useful work for fair pay, no? They're not charity cases and I should't feel bad or feel compelled to use their services if I don't need those services at all, right? </counter-rant>
- 11y ago
- greggman 11y agoI'm really curious where these numbers come from. I've found NYC always way more expensive than SF. Similarly London is hugely expensive. I'm wondering it there's either a bias in the way I search and look (booking.com) or whether there's some other explanation like a few super expensive places raising the price. As an example I just put in Oct 11, 2015. SF: 21 hotels $55-$110 36 hotels $110-$160 55 hotels $160-$220 123 hotels $220+ NYC: 4 hotels $55-$110 7 hotels $110-$160 35 hotels $160-$220 367 hotels $220+
- smackfu 11y agoSF jumped 88% in one year according to these stats. That seems odd to me. Maybe since they only look at two weeks, and fairly far out, something messed up the stats.
- henrikschroder 11y agoAny week there's a large convention at Moscone, hotel prices double across the city. I helped some friends who are coming over in October to book hotels, and we ended up moving the trip around to avoid the Oracle thing, because paying $500 for a hotel that's normally $350 is just not fun.
- ghaff 11y agoYeah. During a big Moscone event in late August, there are "cheap" hotels at the airport that were over $400 as of a month ago and very ordinary business hotels near the Moscone and Union Square were in the $500-$600 range when they had rooms available at all. My personal sense is that San Francisco has gotten more expensive than New York or London. It obviously depends on what's happening at the time and where you're staying but I find with a little searching I can usually dig up reasonable-ish rates in New York and London. In San Francisco, if there's a big Moscone event (which tends to be when I travel there), it's hard to find much even on the other side of town.
- Symbiote 11y ago
- Shivetya 11y agoIs this before or after the fourteen percent hotel tax? that would be another bump of nearly sixty bucks on the average room price given.
- justizin 11y agoBoth cities have hotel taxes which should be included in the price of the room, AFAIK.
- jonny_eh 11y agoHow is it that Airbnb is hurting hotels again? SF is the hometown of Airbnb, and yet hotel prices are still sky high.
- dopamean 11y agoIn all the moaning I've heard about Airbnb I have not actually heard anyone make the claim that they are hurting hotels. I'm sure actual hotel company executives have but most of the complaining I've heard has to do with lots of strangers coming through people's buildings and things like that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dopamean 11y agoYou really think the minimum wage is why hotels are expensive in SF?
- smackfu 11y agoThe 15% min wage increase caused an 88% increase in hotel prices. Of course.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- justizin 11y agoAlso, this logic leans on the notion that people would actually work in a hotel for minimum wage - that's unlikely.
- fennecfoxen 11y agoWhile that growth is helping buoy hotel demand, many developers eschew lodging projects because of the high expenses associated with staffing a hotel in San Francisco... “If you want to build something in San Francisco today, the economics, such as labor costs and zoning, essentially favor other asset classes,” [David Loeb, a lodging analyst] said. So, eh. San Francisco had rising labor costs to begin with, but bringing up the minimum wage can't be that much of a stretch.
- henrikschroder 11y agoYeah, the real-estate shortage, tech boom, and the fact that many corporations moved their events to SF from Las Vegas can't possibly have anything to do with it...
- pkaye 11y agoYeah I'm sure this has nothing to do with the tourist season and conventions going on.
- habosa 11y agoI wonder how the analysis was done. San Francisco has a very different "hotel" presence than other cities I've been in. Here are just a few unique things: * SF is one of the few cities I've ever been in where you will see motels in populous city areas. Normally you'd think in such a crowded city having a huge parking lot on your property would be foolish, but it seems to be popular. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 motels in the Marina/Cow Hollow area and 2 more in Soma, both of which are neighborhoods with insanely high real estate prices. * In the areas in/around the Tenderloin there are a huge number of "hotels" that are basically extended stay residences for people who can't afford any apartment in SF. They're a few hundred bucks a month and feature tiny, often dirty rooms with shared bathrooms and no kitchen. However they're all called "____ Hotel" so they'd appear in any blind analysis of the city.
- mikeash 11y agoRegarding motels, I imagine that's the a consequence of the same anti-development forces that have been driving up real estate prices and produce extremely valuable areas filled with low-rise buildings. Having a huge parking lot on your property in the middle of SF has to be foolish. At the very least it must be worth building a multi-level garage to save space. However, is it feasible to replace it with anything else? If you already have a parking lot, perhaps because it was totally sensible in 1932 or whenever it was originally built, what does it take to build something more valuable on that land today?
- akulbe 11y agoAnd people wonder why Airbnb is taking off like it is. The hotel industry is a cartel. I hope Airbnb stays A Good Thing™ for a long time. I fear with its high valuation that it will only last so long, before sweeping changes are made that make it no longer worth it. For now, I'm going to ride the train to the end of the line. DISCLAIMER: I am an Airbnb host, but not in Cali.
- pkaye 11y agoThen why are Airbnb rentals in SF more expensive that in other cities? Hint: they all charge what the market will bare.
- Betelgeuse90 11y agoI wonder what the median prices are. This smells like it might be the case that most hotels cost significantly less than the average but a few super ridiculously expensive ones jack up the average by a very large margin.
- Betelgeuse90 11y agoI wonder what the median prices are. This smells like it might be the case that most hotels cost significantly lower than the average but a few super ridiculously expensive ones jack up the average by a large margin.