Most expensive city for hotels in the world? UPDATED

*WE HAVE UPDATED THIS STORY! Please see this

A king bed with a water view at SF’s popular Hotel Vitale will set you back $725 in mid July (Photo: JDV Hotels)

Bloomberg reports today that San Francisco’s hotel rates jumped a whopping 88 percent over the last year, and now average a painful $397 per night. (SEE 6PM PDT UPDATE BELOW)

WE HAVE UPDATED THIS STORY! Please see this: https://travelskills.com/2015/07/01/san-francisco-hotels-not-most-expensive-after-all/

That increase kicked Geneva, Switzerland off the top of the list where average rates are nearly $100 cheaper.

Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles now rank in the top 10 most expensive cities for hotel stays, too.

Surprisingly, New York ranks 16th, likely due to its wide range of price points, and its recent surge in new hotel openings adding plenty of supply.

The Bloomberg gauge measured 100 cities based on the average daily cost of hotels, regardless of star ratings, for two adults in a double-occupancy room.

San Francisco’s soaring rates are due to a combination of high demand due to the tech boom, and very limited supply due to high real estate and development costs.

When new hotels open, they do so on a small footprint. Some examples: The new-from-the-ground-up Hampton Inn near Moscone Center (opens July 1), and the future Courtyard by Marriott San Francisco Union Square (opening in August), will be housed in a re-vamped building near the seedy Tenderloin area of the city. It’s no wonder that Loews pounced on (and paid top dollar for) the Mandarin Oriental and Hilton nabbed the Parc 55 this year.

The situation has become so dire that San Francisco based Salesforce has chartered a Celebrity cruise ship to moor at the Embarcadero to house attendees at its huge Dreamforce event in September. The ship accommodates 2,170 passengers.

If you think San Francisco’s rates are high now, just wait until Super Bowl week in 2016. Right now, the Best Western Tuscan Inn in Fisherman’s Wharf is going for nearly $1,000 per night. And there’s no availability at any four or five star hotel downtown or Union Square. Out by SFO airport, the Aloft hotel is going for $1,019 per night on Super Bowl weekend.

How much did you pay to stay in San Francisco last time you were there?

UPDATE: The San Francisco Travel Association responded to our request for a comment on this Bloomberg report. Here’s what they had to say: 

San Francisco enjoys being a top global destination for tourists and conventions, but it is NOT home to the “world’s priciest hotel rates” as indicated in a Bloomberg News story. The story used an unscientific “snapshot” survey that is inaccurate, including calculations from next year’s San Francisco-hosted Super Bowl week, a once-in-a lifetime event.

The hotel industry’s accepted standard for comparisons is the Average Daily Rate. The 2015 forecasted ADR for San Francisco is $257, which ranks third in the United States behind New York and Honolulu.

San Francisco offers a wide range of hotel accommodations for its 18 million visitors, supporting 87,000 travel industry employees and generating more than $665 million in city tax revenue annually.

Chris, if the dates the reporter selected were 30 days later, it would have been an entirely different story.

WE HAVE UPDATED THIS STORY! Please see this: https://travelskills.com/2015/07/01/san-francisco-hotels-not-most-expensive-after-all/

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