San Francisco Hotel Rooms Remain Tight

<B> San Francisco Hotel Rooms Remain Tight</B>

By Fred Gebhart

There's good new and bad news for planners who are put off by San Francisco's average $147 room rate or the inability to arrange a room block at any price in a city with 30,000 rooms. First the good news: More than 2,600 new rooms are expected to be available by 2002, and nearly all are just blocks from the Moscone Convention Center. The bad news: Demand for rooms is likely to exceed supply after February 2003, when the center is due to open 300,000 square feet of new convention space.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide will open a 432-room W Hotel early next year. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts will add 285 rooms and Omni Hotels will add 360 rooms in 2000. Marriott International will follow in 2002 with a 400-room Courtyard Hotel.

John Marks, director of the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the additions represent only a "modest and reasonable" improvement in the city's room inventory.

Still, it's the biggest building boom San Francisco has seen since the 1980s, when occupancies fell to 66 percent.