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San Francisco hotels are home to The City’s leading industry, travel and tourism. Each year San Francisco hotels welcome more than 4.5 million guests, visitors and conventions who account for nearly $8 billion in revenues to local businesses and who create approximately $426 million in tax and fee revenues annually for San Francisco.
The Hotel Council is proud to represent San Francisco’s hotels which are the lifeblood of The City’s economy. Hotel Council members are each individually negotiating with Unite Here Local 2 which represents 9,000 employees at The City’s hotels.
The contract between hotels and Local 2 expired in August 2009. Individual hotels have had numerous negotiating sessions to get a new contract, but Local 2 leaders have rejected offers. In contrast, practically every other union has successfully negotiated contracts with the hotels or is in peaceful and productive negotiations with management.
We value our employees and we want you to know the facts about union salaries and benefits.
Forbes blog
August 5, 2011
http://blogs.forbes.com/andrewbender/2011/08/05/how-green-is-your-hotel/
A big green hooray for you!
You’ve dutifully hung your towels on the rack instead of leaving them on the bathroom floor. You’ve chosen hotels with low-flow showers and compact fluorecent light bulbs. You’ve opted for shampoo from a dispenser instead of those tiny bottles. And a big green hooray for the hotels offering these amenities (and saving on operating costs in the process).
Which of these environmental features is the traveler’s favorite?
Turns out: none of them. Or all of them. “These green attributes are important to travelers,” says Michelle Millar, assistant professor, University of San Francisco School of Management. “But it seems that the most important is whether the hotel has some kind of certification that says it’s green.” Millar and Seyhmus Baloglu, of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, surveyed 571 business and leisure travelers and published the results in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. It claims to be the first study to examine hotels’ green initiatives from the travelers’ perspective.
But not all certifications are alike, since different agencies have different standards. Millar says LEED [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] certification administered by the U.S. Green Building Council headquartered in Washington, DC, is “probably the standard, although it’s very expensive.”
A LEED design and construction review for a hotel can cost as much as $27,500. Factors include site location, water efficiency, energy use, materials and indoor air quality, weighed against whether the building is new or a conversion of an existing building. Out of a 100 point scale, 80-plus points earns a platinum rating (10 hotels so far), through gold and silver down to 40-49 points for plain vanilla LEED certification.
“The hospitality industry has become a mainstay of the green building movement,” says Doug Gatlin, USGBC’s vice president of market development. “USGBC has been seeing dramatic growth in the number of LEED-certified hotel properties in the past two years.” As of August 4, 2011, USGBC reports that 132 projects have achieved LEED certification, while another 1,069 are in the process.
States have also gotten into the act; among them, Florida, California and Maryland have their own green building standards.
Then there’s Houston-based “Green” Hotels Association, which doesn’t recommend certification. Rather, its member hotels register by mail after voluntarily committing to saving water and energy and reducing waste. “How they do that is up to them,” says founder and president Patty Griffin. “A hotel in New York City, in Phoenix, Arizona or on the coast will have different needs and different guests.”
Member hotels pay $150 plus $1 per room annually, receive 159 pages of eco-friendly guidelines and can purchase collateral such as “Green” Hotels Association stickers and flags. “WE GUARANTEE MORE MONEY WILL BE SAVED than the membership costs by implementing these ideas,” reads the association’s website.
But how does the association guarantee that the hotels are living up to green goals? “Guests lean on them,” says Griffin. “We want them to let the management know that they want to participate in green programs.”
A big green hooray for them too.
USA Today
August 4, 2011
http://travel.usatoday.com/news/story/2011/08/States-cut-back-on-efforts-to-draw-tourists/49757128/1
About 20 states have cut spending in the past year on advertising and other promotion and support to try to lure tourists and their vacation dollars, the U.S. Travel Association says.
That includes states that depend heavily on tourists’ dollars such as Hawaii, Washington, New York, South Carolina and Arizona.
One state — Washington — has shut down its tourism promotion office after lawmakers couldn’t come up with the $2 million they usually spent to attract visitors.
Tight budgetary times are the reason for the cuts. They’re resulting in less advertising aimed at getting visitors. Many tourism offices are laying off employees, inviting fewer travel agents and writers in on “familiarization” trips, and avoiding expensive trade shows, where state travel officials traditionally have courted corporate travel and convention planners.
“Everybody has to figure out how to do more with less,” says Mike McCartney, CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority, which had its budget lowered and capped at $69 million each of the next four years compared with $81 million a year ago. “You’re not going to see a lot of our ads on CNN.”
By Mark Greenberg, JetBlue Airways/PRNewsFoto
A JetBlue Airbus A320 features its co-branded trademark with New York’s I LOVE NEW YORK tourism campaign.
The cutbacks come as many Americans and businesses have shaken off their recession-induced skittishness and are traveling again.
Spending on travel and tourism increased 0.6% in the first quarter of the year after an increase of 2.6% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Reflecting a growing demand for travel, overall growth in prices for travel and tourism goods and services rose 9.8% in the first quarter after a 1.7% jump in the fourth quarter of 2010.
Many Americans — more than six of 10 — said they were tired of sitting at home and were ready to travel again this summer, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll found in May. According to the poll, they were willing to go on vacation knowing it would probably cost them more than a year ago.
Selective ad spending
With slashed budgets, state marketers are learning to do without expensive advertising tools they’ve relied on.
Few states buy national ads. Instead, some spend what advertising money they have on select, targeted markets.
The Nevada Commission on Tourism, for instance, has stopped advertising in publications such as Conde Nast Traveler and National Geographic. It’s pouring its ad dollars into ads in cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle, says spokeswoman Bethany Drysdale.
New York no longer has money for television ads, says New York Economic Development Commissioner Ken Adams, whose tourism marketing budget was cut 39% to $7.4 million in the past two years.
Many state tourism officials say the budget cutting is shortsighted and costs them visitors, which ultimately hurts their states economically.
In bypassing national advertising, Arizona has “missed some marketing opportunities,” says Sherry Henry, executive director of Arizona’s Office of Tourism.
Like other states, Arizona has tried to target markets it thinks will deliver visitors. Now that its fiscal year 2012 budget is $8.6 million compared with $19 million in 2009, Henry’s office focuses on Chicago and Los Angeles. “We don’t have the bandwidth we once had,” she says.
In 2007, when its budget was $26 million, her office spent $9 million on advertising.
“That’s more than our budget right now,” Henry says. “When you don’t advertise, (travelers) don’t keep Arizona on top of (their) mind. And they’re going to choose somewhere else.”
Social media
Fewer dollars means tourism directors turn to other ways to try to lure visitors.
Some have turned to less-expensive online options — such as Facebook, Flickr photo contests and other social media channels.
Nevada tourism officials met with Google to learn about the keywords and search results related to state tourism — such as Hoover Dam or Highway 50, the loneliest road in America. They paid the search engine to ensure that Nevada’s online ads show up on websites that discuss these topics and terms, Drysdale says.
Tighter budgets foster more partnerships with the travel industry. In a deal with JetBlue, New York saved money by allowing the airline to paint the state’s iconic “I Love New York” logo on an Airbus A320 in a co-branding campaign.
The Hawaii Tourism Authority has partnered with hotels to buy large newspaper ads in San Francisco.
Smaller cities and towns that have relied on state marketing efforts could be disproportionately hurt by cutbacks, some say.
“The biggest challenge will be in rural areas, in smaller communities who don’t have the budget that Seattle has to market itself,” Marsha Massey, outgoing tourism director for Washington told the Seattle Weekly.
Some states that salvaged their tourism budgets had to fight for every penny.
Texas had drafted a budget to slash tourism promotion funding to $5 million for 2012-2013 from $32 million projected for 2011. State lawmakers eventually voted to retain spending levels after hundreds of tourism officials rallied in Austin this year to lobby against the cut.
“We were disheartened when we saw the (draft) budget,” says Texas Hotel & Lodging Association CEO Scott Joslove. “We’ve never had that low of a begging point.”
San Francisco Chronicle
August 1, 2011
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/01/MNJ31KHFSB.DTL
SAN FRANCISCO — Michael Wardian had a “fantastic” 10-mile run Saturday in the Marin Headlands before he stopped in Mill Valley, a town he loves, for a burrito. By the time he drove back to his hotel in San Francisco, the euphoria of the day had worn off: He had severe food poisoning, and spent the rest of the day and night vomiting.
But early Sunday morning, the 37-year-old elite runner from Arlington, Va., smiled as he crossed the finish line and won the San Francisco Marathon, coming in unofficially at 2 hours, 27 minutes and 6 seconds – more than 7 minutes ahead of the second-place finisher.
Wardian confesses he is a “freak of nature,” and he was pondering doing a 10-mile run to “warm down” after winning. His resting heart rate is 31 beats per minute – 60 to 100 is average – and he recently placed third in the 135-mile Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, where temperatures reached 130 degrees. But he had never won the San Francisco Marathon, finishing second twice.
25,000 participants
Wardian was at the front of a 7,000-person pack in the full marathon, and was among 25,000 people taking part in various races ending along the fog-cooled Embarcadero.
The winner of the women’s marathon was Emily Field, a 30-year-old runner from Los Angeles, who finished in 2:50:24. Last year’s men’s champion, 26-year-old Keith Bechtol of Palo Alto, was just 17 seconds shy of setting a race record Sunday in the second half-marathon (1:05:19).
The San Francisco Marathon, the 13th-largest in the United States and a qualifying race for the Boston Marathon, takes runners along 26.2 scenic miles of the city, past landmarks including the Ferry Building, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Haight Street and AT&T Park.
“My heart really was beating from the excitement as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and the lights of the city were sparkling,” Wardian said.
Another adrenaline rush came as he ran along Haight Street. “I was a Grateful Dead fan, so to see the Haight, with all of the sketchy elements, was great.”
Later, Wardian urged on other runners who ambled, hobbled, cheered, jumped, sprinted, spit or cried as they crossed the finish line. Many of the runners looked ashen and delirious. Some had to sit in wheelchairs that were provided. A few threw up. Some saw their legs contort in spasms.
Others, including Devon Crosby-Helms of San Francisco and her boyfriend Nathan Yanko, both 29, loped along easily and happily, holding hands as they crossed the finish line.
‘A great time’
“We had a great time,” said Crosby-Helms, the third-place finisher among female marathoners. Her time was 2:53:55, which she said was done without pushing herself and was 10 minutes slower than her personal best.
“This was really a training race for me,” she said. “I’m competing in the world championships for the 100K (kilometers) in September. And I just did a 42-mile race last Saturday.”
Crosby-Helms and Yanko – she is a personal chef, he a pastry chef at Tartine – met while running. Now, during races, they have an understanding that they can’t start talking about food until they are close to the finish line. Before Sunday’s race, they had a hanger steak from Marin Sun Farms, roasted sweet potatoes, and an heirloom tomato salad.
“I think the goal with these races is just to challenge yourself,” Crosby-Helms said. “For me, it’s not competitive. I just love running.”
For Anders Forselius, who is from Sweden, marathons are a way to see the world, and to raise money for cancer research. With a shirt tagged with “Biking Viking,” Forselius said he is doing one marathon in every state. He started April 18 with the Boston Marathon, followed by marathons in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Washington, Montana and now California.
“The San Francisco Marathon is like the Himalayas,” the 43-year-old said. “It’s tough. Up and down the hills. I love it.”
For Alexandra Wood, who is from Sacramento and turned 18 on July 9, the marathon was a goal before heading off to her freshman year at UCLA.
Cheering section
“It was so fun,” Wood said, as her mom, aunt and little brother stood by, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “Run Alex Run.” The Wood crew took taxis to points along the route, including at mile 10 and mile 19.
Lisa Wood said of her daughter, “It’s a healthy thing for her to do. She’s a teenager, and she won’t do things like drink, because she wants to be out running and feel good.”
She added, “I was really hoping she wouldn’t bonk out at mile 19.”
She needn’t have worried – her daughter finished at 3:29:48. She was first in the 19 and younger age group for women.
“The marathon was just a goal of mine,” Alexandra Wood said with a happy shrug.
Wall Street Journal
July 29, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576468383797139042.html
San Francisco’s tourism-reliant businesses, one of the city’s key industries, are enjoying a rebound but no longer believe that 2011 will bring sales back to prerecession levels.
Personality Hotels LLC, which runs Hotel Union Square, Hotel Diva and two boutique properties, has raised average daily room rates by 15% to 20% from a year ago, but occupancy has remained flat, said Chief Executive Yvonne Lembi-Detert.
“I thought it would have been better than it is,” she said. Her outlook now: “I’m looking forward to 2012.”
The city’s tourism industry generally mirrors that of the national economy, and both are recovering more slowly than many had expected. This is a blow to an economic engine for San Francisco that employs tens of thousands of workers and is the city’s biggest industry by tax revenue.
In 2010, the city had 15.9 million visitors, who spent $8.34 billion and generated $485 million in tax revenue for the city, according to San Francisco Travel, the city’s primary visitors bureau.
That’s up from 2009, when 15.4 million people visited the city and spent $7.8 billion, but still down from 2008, when those respective figures were 16.4 million visitors and $8.5 billion in spending.
The tourism bureau’s chief executive, Joe D’Alessandro, predicts that spending will rise this year. He added that the outlook for 2012 is uncertain and could even decline, in part because Moscone Center, the city’s main convention site, will be closed for weeklong stretches for renovations next year.
About half of the city’s tourism-related tax revenue comes from the hotel business. Industry tracker Colliers PKF Consulting forecasts that the hotel occupancy rate will rise 2% to 77% this year, compared with 2010, while average daily rates will jump 9.7% to $149.23.
Those projections are lower than they were earlier this year, said Thomas Callahan, head of PKF’s West Coast practice. He said the more conservative forecast was “because of all the uncertainty in the economy,” adding that the hotel industry won’t bounce back to its 2008 peak until next year. PKF predicts that in 2012, occupancy will stay level, while the average daily room rate will rise 7.9% to $161.02.
The slow rebound is apparent in other tourism-related businesses. Sales at Sinbad’s, a popular restaurant on Pier 2, are flat from last year and down 20% from two years ago, said owner Tom Stinson. Not only is drop-in traffic down from before the recession, but people are spending less, he said.
Mr. Stinson had hoped that business would pick up in the spring, but now believes it will take several more months to “ride the storm out.”
Mr. D’Alessandro, of San Francisco Travel, said the industry this year had actually surpassed his expectations; the travel bureau had predicted a drop. The bulk of the growth comes from foreign tourists, who make up roughly one-third of the city’s visitors. He said there are especially more travelers from Asian countries.
“It’s very significant,” Mr. D’Alessandro said. “International visitors tend to stay longer and they tend to spend more.”
Any economic struggles weren’t obvious on Fisherman’s Wharf on a recent Sunday. Tourists struggled to stay on crowded sidewalks while throngs watched street magicians and gobbled down cookies from Boudin Sourdough Bakery & Café.
“It’s still a popular tourist destination, tons of people still out, [though] maybe not spending as much,” said Rodney Fong, president of the Wax Museum at Fisherman’s Wharf.
Mr. Fong said the museum’s ticket sales were down very slightly from last year and off 4% from two years earlier. He said business could have been worse off it weren’t for a big uptick in California visitors. “It’s not that bad,” he said.
At Scoma’s Restaurant a couple blocks away, Mariann Costello echoed that feeling. The seafood restaurant posted flat revenue last year, but it’s now up 5%, said Ms. Costello, the restaurant’s vice president. She said Scoma’s wasn’t quite back to the peak of 2008, but that it wasn’t too far off.
“We would have liked to have gotten back to pre-recession numbers, but it’s not unexpected, given the economy that surrounds us,” she said.
San Francisco Business Times
July 28, 2011
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2011/07/hilton-starwood-chinese-hospitality.html?page=all
San Francisco is ground zero for a global push by Hilton and StarwoodbizWatch to court and win the Chinese traveler.
Both hotel chains have spent close to a year developing a signature welcome program for Chinese visitors. These include breakfast menu items to appeal to Chinese tastes, like congee rice porridge and dumplings, in-room amenities like slippers, tea kettles and green tea, and a dedicated staffer fluent in Chinese to greet the guests as they arrive and to make their stay easier. Hilton even ensures that the rooms of Chinese guests have at least one Chinese language television station. These services are free.
There’s sound business in chasing the Chinese traveler both domestically and abroad.
Inbound Chinese travel is the fastest growing market segment to San Francisco, and to the United States — in 2010 it increased more than 50 percent over 2009, and the number of visitors could triple by 2015. There were 150,000 visitors to San Francisco from the Chinese mainland in 2010, according to San Francisco Travel Association. The average Chinese visitor to the U.S. spent $6,243 on their stay in 2010, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Several factors contribute to the rise of the Chinese traveler. China has made it easier for its citizens to travel abroad, and a growing middle class there means that more people have means to travel. Too, the U.S. is trying to ease visa requirements for Chinese travelers, so many anticipate a major boom in Chinese tourism, particularly to cities like San Francisco, with its significant Chinese population and cultural ties to Asia, not to mention its gateway status to Asian airports.
And of course, Chinese travelers aren’t only coming to the U.S., which is why Hiltons in Seoul, London, Tokyo and Sydney are also part of the Huanying program.
Hilton Huanying (the Chinese word for “welcome”) launches globally on August 16 with an event here in San Francisco. Hotels in any of Hilton’s 10 brands can opt-in, though the initiative was created by Hilton Hotels & Resorts, the company’s signature brand. Three San Francisco hotels and one at SFO are among the first 49 participants worldwide, which speaks to the power of this market. Forty more Hilton properties are now undergoing training to become “Hilton Huanying” ready.
Starwood has dubbed its program “Starwood Personalized Travel,” and it will start in just 19 hotels, including the Westin St. FrancisbizWatch in San Francisco. By the end of 2012, Starwood expects all of its 1,000-plus hotels, which include Sheraton, Westin and W, to offer the Personalized Travel program.
Chinese nationals traveling abroad still primarily book through official government travel agencies and tour operators, so Hilton is marketing Huanying with those providers. There are Chinese language landing pages on the Hilton booking website and search functionality to help people find the Huanying properties, said John Forrest Ales, director, global public relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts.
“We are certainly excited and encouraged by both Hilton’s and Starwood’s efforts to reach out to the Chinese market and make the Chinese visitor more welcome,” said Tom Kiely, vice president of tourism development at S.F. Travel. “These are two more examples of how visitor entities in San Francisco are working to appeal to all different markets.”
Houston Business Journal
July 26, 2011
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/blog/2011/07/san-francisco-firm-eyes-houston-hotel.html
A well-established San Francisco hospitality company is looking to develop, acquire and manage hotels in Houston.
Kimpton Hotels & RestaurantsbizWatch , which focuses on upper-priced and boutique hotels, is seeking business opportunities in all major Texas markets after its success in managing two Dallas-area hotels.
The Dallas Business Journal wrote about the expansion plans in the July 22 issue.
“We buy a building and develop a hotel, or buy an existing hotel and convert it to a Kimpton hotel,” Niki Leondakis, Kimpton’s president and COO, told the newspaper. “That’s one way we grow and develop. The other is through pure management contracts for third-party owners.”
The 30-year-old company currently operates more than 50 hotels in 18 states.
Management companies typically land new contracts when a hotel sells or is rebranded, according to Randy McCaslin, vice president with San Francisco-based PKF ConsultingbizWatch , which owns PKF Hospitality Research.
It may be a good time for the hotel operator to consider Houston, since the latest performance data on upper-priced hotels in the Houston area is better than it has been for years.
PKF Hospitality Research reported the city’s upper-priced hotels had a 67.3 percent occupancy rate in the first quarter, the latest data available. The last time the figure was that high was when the annual occupancy rate reached 69.1 percent in 2008.
The average daily room rate at upper-priced hotels in the first quarter was $129.26 in Houston. The last time it reached that level was in second-quarter 2009, when it was $131.19.
Finally, PKF reported the local revenue per available room was $86.99 in the upper-priced category in the first quarter. We have to go back to the annual 2008 RevPAR figure of $98.90 to beat that.
So keep an eye out for Kimpton as it muscles its way into the Houston market.
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