Research in Progress

Le Meridien San Francisco, Corner Room Business Suite
Rate Paid: $139
Best Available Rate for this room $650
Complimentary upgrade as SPG Platinum = $500 added value

After a wonderful weekend in San Francisco I returned to the very unhealthy air quality in Monterey. Weeks of fire has had its impact.

Currently I am working on a couple of different research projects. One has been to evaluate hotel review sites and it keeps expanding day to day.



Also, I am working to get my blog moved over to BoardingArea.com and that will hopefully be completed in the next couple of weeks. My posts have been moved over there and the final stages are underway. I've actually been formatting my posts and posting to two sites for the past month.



It has been a hectic past three weeks and next week things should calm down and I'll be posting more frequently.

Hyatt Gold Passport 5K San Francisco bonus

View of San Francisco Ferry Building from Hyatt Regency Embarcadero




If you're going to San Francisco...



Hyatt Gold Passport has a 5,000 points bonus special offer for 2-night (or longer) stays through the summer months.



The promotion runs from today, May 28, 2008 through August 31, 2008.



Gold Passport Offer Code = SFO5K which needs to be inserted in the reservation booking page.


All the Bay area Hyatt Hotels are participating:


- Hyatt Regency San Francisco at the Embarcadero
- Hyatt Regency San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf
- Grand Hyatt San Francisco
- Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport
- Hyatt Regency Santa Clara
- Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel and Spa, Santa Rosa


I did a few booking checks and rates are as low as $179.10/night for Grand Hyatt and San Francisco Hyatt Regency for July 3-5 on AAA rate. Weekends in San Francisco have lower hotel rates, except for Fisherman's Wharf.


The SFO airport Hyatt and Santa Clara are the best deals for people wanting stay credit and points at a low rate with rates close to $100/night for some dates in summer.



Hyatt Vineyard Creek in Santa Rosa has lowest rates midweek.

Points Calculator:
Assume $360 base rate for two nights in San Francisco.

Earn 5 points/$1 = 1,800 points.


Plus, earn 5,000 points bonus.



6,800 points is enough for two upgrade awards using points.



A free night at a Category 1 hotel is 5,000 points or 8,000 points for a Category 2 hotel. Last month I redeemed 8,000 points for a Category 2 hotel room at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix when I attended the Freddies Awards. I received a 1,000 points award rebate at the hotel at check-in. 7,000 points saved me the cost of a $300/night hotel room.



This is a good Hyatt Gold Passport deal. Spend a couple nights in San Francisco and earn a free night's worth of bonus points with the SFO5K offer.

See other Hyatt Gold Passport Exclusive Offers for bonus points at other hotels.

Westin Market San Francisco - up to 7,500 bonus points

Westin San Francisco Market Street (on right); Four Seasons (left) and floors 30-36 of the Grand Hyatt hotel near Union Square can be seen in the center of this photo.

Starwood Preferred Guest is giving travelers a great deal for a weekend stay in San Francisco at the Westin San Francisco Market Street.

SPG Promotion Offer for weekend stays Thursday - Sunday through August 31, 2008:
2,500 points for a 1-night stay
5,000 points for a 2-night stay
7,500 points for a 3-night stay

The Westin San Francisco Market Street is located at 50 Third Street, adjacent to Market Street, in the SoMa district on the same street as the W Hotel and St. Regis. This is the newest Starwood property in San Francisco and was rebranded from the Argent Hotel a couple of years ago. The design of the hotel is such that a variety of room sizes exist and the building has high floors with good unobstructed views towards the west and south from high floors. Large flat screen TVs are in the rooms.

By the Numbers:
San Francisco hotel rates are almost always higher on Thursday nights in the Central Business District than Friday or Saturday. Fisherman's Wharf tourist hotels tend to be opposite. In summer everything can be high priced most of the week.

I found availability for the Westin Market Street for this Friday, May 9 for $149/night using the SUMNTS special rate plan link. After 14% tax the total hotel room rate is $170/night.

As a SPG platinum member I could receive $149 x 3 Starpoints = 447 points + 500 Starpoints platinum elite amenity gift + 2,500 Summer1 bonus points = 3,447 Starpoints.

Assume Starpoints can be redeemed on a future Starwood Hotels stay at the rate of $35/1,000 points hotel value and these points are potentially a $120 rebate value.

Net cost for Westin San Francisco Market Street hotel room = $50.

My recent stays using Cash & Points awards in Starwood Palm Springs (Westin Mission Hills Rancho Mirage) and Scottsdale (Westin Kierland) resorts had a Starpoints redemption value of about $520 for 9,000 points ($57/1,000 Starpoints). This rate of redemption value would make points earned worth more than cost of the Westin Market Street hotel room.

SPG Gold elite will not get the 500 Starpoints platinum amenity and the points earned will be 2,947 Starpoints per night. These have a potential redemption value of $103 at $35/1,000 points.

Net cost of hotel night for SPG Gold member = $67.

SPG Blue members (non-elites) will only receive 2 Starpoints per $1 hotel spending.
$149 x 2 = 298 Starpoints + 2,500 bonus points = 2,798 Starpoints for $170 room.
2,798 Starpoints at $35/1,000 has a potential value of $98 rebate on future Starwood Hotels stay.

Net cost for the Westin Market Street is $72/night for the SPG member with no elite status.

The real value of the Starpoints, even for an infrequent hotel traveler, is the opportunity to book Cash & Points awards using your Starpoints. A Category 3 hotel will cost 2,800 Starpoints + $45. There are many instances where the 2,800 Starpoints will save a guest $200 on a hotel reservation.



The Westin San Francisco Market Street has a wonderful outdoor sidewalk patio for Ducca Restaurant dining and drinks.

This is a great deal for San Francisco hotel travel.

Stay a weekend in the city and earn enough Starpoints to book another weekend Starwood getaway this summer at a great discount.

Westin San Francisco Market Street
SPG Category 4 Hotel = 10,000 points/free night

TripAdvisor Ranking = #49 of all 238 San Francisco Hotels
TripAdvisor Reviews

Have you ever been experienced? I Have!

Sheraton Libertador, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Presidential Suite stay, June 2007

An article I read earlier this week keeps coming back to my thoughts. “Travel Editors Gather to Rap about the issues du jour.” appeared on http://www.travelweekly.com/ April 1, 2008.

The editors were asked about how the economy will impact travel. Erik Torkells, editor, Budget Travel stated something I keep remembering:
“There will always be people who want to continue to spend money, and if travel's their No. 1 priority, they will continue to do it. And there will always be people who want a deal, and an incredible part of the experience for them is finding that deal. People tend to do what they do unless they absolutely can't.”

Last week I was hanging out in San Francisco. I woke up in my lovely hotel room at the Hyatt Regency and read the paper. I read about an old man who was beaten to death around Mission and Fifth Street the day before. The murder happened by the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper building, just around the corner from the new InterContinental San Francisco hotel.

When I made the comment in my blog a couple of weeks ago about the InterContinental pushing the slum boundary another block south and west, I was not intending to make a slur against the InterContinental. The fact is the SoMa (South of Market Street) district is a scary place if you wander into the wrong streets. I approached the new InterContinental hotel coming from Sixth Street and Howard and I had to walk the gauntlet at 9am in the morning around hundreds of homeless, some mentally ill, some drunk, some sleeping, some bathing on the curb, but I wasn’t bothered by anyone.

A couple of years ago, I exited a restaurant at midnight across the street from the W Hotel San Francisco, and witnessed a couple of street people harassing tourists in a threatening manner. I was glad the hotel entrance was so close.

Last summer, outside the Westin Seattle, a crazy man threatened my wife and I with a large piece of lumber on his shoulder if we didn't give him $5. We ran into the street and took our chances with cars rather than risk being clobbered by a nutcase an hour before embarking on a cruise. And this was at noon time on a sunny Saturday.

Westin Seattle

A luxury hotel in the slums is all fine as long as you stay in the hotel. To me it is like being in a Caribbean or South American hotel where the world is kept outside and inside luxury abounds. I’d rather be in the nicer parts of San Francisco and for me that means Union Square (Grand Hyatt, Westin St. Francis, JW Marriott), the Financial District (Hilton Financial District, Le Meridien), or Nob Hill (InterContinental Mark Hopkins, Renaissance Stanford Court, Fairmont, Ritz-Carlton). Fisherman’s Wharf hotels are in a highly touristed area, but unless the price is lower at Fisherman’s Wharf (which it usually isn’t) than downtown, I would opt for the larger downtown hotels. It only takes 15 to 20 minutes by cheap public transportation ($1.50) to reach Fisherman’s Wharf.

Many of the new luxury hotels in San Francisco are on Market Street (Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton Residences) or South of Market (Westin Market, W Hotel, St. Regis, Marriott, InterContinental San Francisco) and it will take some time for this area to develop into a safer location.

Heidi Mitchell, editor of Town & Country Travel, commented that the advantage of travel writers is their experience in having a large inventory of hotel experiences to enable valid comparisons between one hotel brand and another and one location in a city compared to another.

My hotel comments in reviews and blog posts are based on having stayed about 500+ hotel nights over the past ten years with hotels in the major corporate chains in locations around Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South America, Asia, Canada, and the USA. It is not a lot compared to many road warriors, however, as a leisure traveler it is a solid foundation for making hotel comparisons.

And I take travel seriously, even if I don’t take myself and my writing too seriously at times.
“Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.”
Anne Sophie Switchine