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I'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

I'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 ago
SF 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 ago
  Any 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 ago
    Yeah. 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
      London and NYC are significant larger, and have many more tourists per capita. They can probably absorb large events without it making much difference to the average price --s prices increase tourists book the week after, or a slightly different area. Both also have good public transport, which makes hotels further from the event more appealing. (I don't know SF enough to content on transport there).
      - ghaff 11y ago
        I don't know about tourists per capita but they're certainly significantly larger cities so most individual events don't cause the huge spike in hotel prices that something like an Oracle or a Salesforce show causes in San Francisco. That said, San Francisco is pretty expensive these days even if there isn't a huge show on just because of overall demand. In general, public transportation in San Francisco isn't very good although it's really not very good to get to the Javits in New York either. However, the Fisherman's Wharf area and Nob Hill aside aside I'm not sure there's a huge amount of hotel capacity in San Francisco outside of a 10-15 minute walk to the convention center anyway.
adventured 11y ago
Expedia had this for SF (weekdays in August): 22 hotels $75-$125 79 hotels $125-$199 88 hotels $200-$299 79 hotels $300+ 5 star average of $382, 4 star average of $348 etc The article really should be using median pricing anyway, but I don't see where they could get such a high average - the total average from Expedia is $246.
- henrikschroder 11y ago
  What happens if you run the same search for the week of Oct 26th?
henrikschroder 11y ago
Try Oct 27 instead. Most hotels are sold out on that date, but the one across the street from me that is normally charging $250 is now charging $819 a night...
- knodi123 11y ago
  the magic word is "confounding variable"
jglovier 11y ago
The stat chart cited in the article says "average hotel cost", so perhaps SF has far fewer hotels in the lower-end category compared to the other cities listed?
- justizin 11y ago
  That's pretty reasonable, lower cost hotels in NYC would probably be in outer boroughs, which to SF would be completely different cities like Oakland, San Mateo, San Jose, Santa Clara, etc.. It's fairly common for both business and vacation travelers to stay in Oakland and commute.
nether 11y ago
Bloomberg tracked hotel prices for dates in February 2016. The Super Bowl is being held in SF in February 2016: http://travelskills.com/2015/07/01/san-francisco-hotels-not-most-expensive-after-all/ http://travelskills.com/2015/07/01/san-francisco-hotels-not-... Using the Average Daily Rate instead, SF hotels come out as third most expensive in the US (behind NYC and Honolulu).
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  To be precise, its being held 40 miles south of SF.
- gkanapathy 11y ago
  In fact, they tracked prices for Feb 1-10, and the Super Bowl is Feb 7. The week before the Super Bowl is the dog-and-pony show. Whether or not people are actually going to fill up SF hotels for an event 40 miles south (vs staying in San Jose or elsewhere), the hotels are likely setting their rates high now. They can also expect to lower them later (during football season, say, as it becomes clearer which teams are likely to attend) if they can't sell them earlier. Basically, they have no idea how much to charge or how much demand they'll see, since they have no experience with this event, so the pricing is going to be set too high to preserve their option to lower them later. So the survey and results are pretty much meaningless.
johansch 11y ago
In London I can always find ok hotels for $150/night. In SF it's 300-350 minimum. All prices including taxes. (Why don't you just include them in the display price, americans?)
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Why don't you just include them in the display price, americans? In most cases it's because local lodging taxes are insanely high. I regularly see e.g. $65 rooms bumped up to close to $100. (I haven't stayed in SF, but it would surprise me if it's an exception.) Are European taxes set at a national level? In USA the relevant taxes are set by each city and county, so by hiding the tax, highly-taxed hotels can better compete with those in the next town over. EDIT: don't expect anything to be good for the consumer!
  - johansch 11y ago
    There typically aren't any lodging taxes. The VAT varies, but hovers around 19-25% (per country). Your answer doesn't make sense though. Laws around price display need to be consumer-centric, not provider-centric. Why should a place in a high-tax location be able to compete with a place in a low-tax location by fooling the customer?
- adventured 11y ago
  At least four reasons. Americans are used to the system they have, it doesn't cause any meaningful economic problems domestically (complaints come almost exclusively from foreigners). Businesses specifically want to show you the price they're charging you, as apart from the taxes they're forced to collect; that also enables businesses to charge a bit more in the rounding schemes (eg sell a blu-ray for $5 headline price, charge tax after; if they had to build tax into it, they'd lose ~6% on the pricing to use the rounding promotion approach). The US has 50 states with different tax schemes, that's a nightmare for labeling goods. For example, usually a bag of chips at Target or Walmart or a convenience store will say eg $3.99 printed on the bag. Some stores will slap their own dominant label on there, others choose not to. Vendors often stock the shelves at stores, especially for certain categories of products, and store types. The chip delivery guy will stock the convenience store, Walmart, etc. Chip production (eg Doritos) and delivery is limited to just a few factories, but they distribute to every state. For convenience, for decades, the companies have typically pre-stamped prices on chip bags. So why not do it with hotels? Because no other segment of the economy tends to do it, and for the other reason mentioned: it cuts into price rounding advertising methods (or you have to raise prices to the next rounding). If you want taxes built into the pricing on consumer goods, either they have to stop price labeling before delivery, or customize for every state. At this point, nobody really wants to change, because the system works fine as is. Ie it's good enough, but not perfect.
yo-code-sucks 11y ago
The Marriott in San Bruno is $300 a night during the week.

smackfu 11y ago

SF 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 ago
Any 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 ago
  Yeah. 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
    London and NYC are significant larger, and have many more tourists per capita. They can probably absorb large events without it making much difference to the average price --s prices increase tourists book the week after, or a slightly different area. Both also have good public transport, which makes hotels further from the event more appealing. (I don't know SF enough to content on transport there).
    - ghaff 11y ago
      I don't know about tourists per capita but they're certainly significantly larger cities so most individual events don't cause the huge spike in hotel prices that something like an Oracle or a Salesforce show causes in San Francisco. That said, San Francisco is pretty expensive these days even if there isn't a huge show on just because of overall demand. In general, public transportation in San Francisco isn't very good although it's really not very good to get to the Javits in New York either. However, the Fisherman's Wharf area and Nob Hill aside aside I'm not sure there's a huge amount of hotel capacity in San Francisco outside of a 10-15 minute walk to the convention center anyway.

adventured 11y ago

Expedia had this for SF (weekdays in August): 22 hotels $75-$125 79 hotels $125-$199 88 hotels $200-$299 79 hotels $300+ 5 star average of $382, 4 star average of $348 etc The article really should be using median pricing anyway, but I don't see where they could get such a high average - the total average from Expedia is $246.

henrikschroder 11y ago
What happens if you run the same search for the week of Oct 26th?

henrikschroder 11y ago

Try Oct 27 instead. Most hotels are sold out on that date, but the one across the street from me that is normally charging $250 is now charging $819 a night...

knodi123 11y ago
the magic word is "confounding variable"

jglovier 11y ago

The stat chart cited in the article says "average hotel cost", so perhaps SF has far fewer hotels in the lower-end category compared to the other cities listed?

justizin 11y ago
That's pretty reasonable, lower cost hotels in NYC would probably be in outer boroughs, which to SF would be completely different cities like Oakland, San Mateo, San Jose, Santa Clara, etc.. It's fairly common for both business and vacation travelers to stay in Oakland and commute.

nether 11y ago

Bloomberg tracked hotel prices for dates in February 2016. The Super Bowl is being held in SF in February 2016: http://travelskills.com/2015/07/01/san-francisco-hotels-not-most-expensive-after-all/ http://travelskills.com/2015/07/01/san-francisco-hotels-not-... Using the Average Daily Rate instead, SF hotels come out as third most expensive in the US (behind NYC and Honolulu).

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
To be precise, its being held 40 miles south of SF.
gkanapathy 11y ago
In fact, they tracked prices for Feb 1-10, and the Super Bowl is Feb 7. The week before the Super Bowl is the dog-and-pony show. Whether or not people are actually going to fill up SF hotels for an event 40 miles south (vs staying in San Jose or elsewhere), the hotels are likely setting their rates high now. They can also expect to lower them later (during football season, say, as it becomes clearer which teams are likely to attend) if they can't sell them earlier. Basically, they have no idea how much to charge or how much demand they'll see, since they have no experience with this event, so the pricing is going to be set too high to preserve their option to lower them later. So the survey and results are pretty much meaningless.

johansch 11y ago

In London I can always find ok hotels for $150/night. In SF it's 300-350 minimum. All prices including taxes. (Why don't you just include them in the display price, americans?)

jessaustin 11y ago
Why don't you just include them in the display price, americans? In most cases it's because local lodging taxes are insanely high. I regularly see e.g. $65 rooms bumped up to close to $100. (I haven't stayed in SF, but it would surprise me if it's an exception.) Are European taxes set at a national level? In USA the relevant taxes are set by each city and county, so by hiding the tax, highly-taxed hotels can better compete with those in the next town over. EDIT: don't expect anything to be good for the consumer!
- johansch 11y ago
  There typically aren't any lodging taxes. The VAT varies, but hovers around 19-25% (per country). Your answer doesn't make sense though. Laws around price display need to be consumer-centric, not provider-centric. Why should a place in a high-tax location be able to compete with a place in a low-tax location by fooling the customer?
adventured 11y ago
At least four reasons. Americans are used to the system they have, it doesn't cause any meaningful economic problems domestically (complaints come almost exclusively from foreigners). Businesses specifically want to show you the price they're charging you, as apart from the taxes they're forced to collect; that also enables businesses to charge a bit more in the rounding schemes (eg sell a blu-ray for $5 headline price, charge tax after; if they had to build tax into it, they'd lose ~6% on the pricing to use the rounding promotion approach). The US has 50 states with different tax schemes, that's a nightmare for labeling goods. For example, usually a bag of chips at Target or Walmart or a convenience store will say eg $3.99 printed on the bag. Some stores will slap their own dominant label on there, others choose not to. Vendors often stock the shelves at stores, especially for certain categories of products, and store types. The chip delivery guy will stock the convenience store, Walmart, etc. Chip production (eg Doritos) and delivery is limited to just a few factories, but they distribute to every state. For convenience, for decades, the companies have typically pre-stamped prices on chip bags. So why not do it with hotels? Because no other segment of the economy tends to do it, and for the other reason mentioned: it cuts into price rounding advertising methods (or you have to raise prices to the next rounding). If you want taxes built into the pricing on consumer goods, either they have to stop price labeling before delivery, or customize for every state. At this point, nobody really wants to change, because the system works fine as is. Ie it's good enough, but not perfect.

yo-code-sucks 11y ago

The Marriott in San Bruno is $300 a night during the week.