* SF is one of the few cities I've ever been in where you will see motels in populous city areas. Normally you'd think in such a crowded city having a huge parking lot on your property would be foolish, but it seems to be popular. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 motels in the Marina/Cow Hollow area and 2 more in Soma, both of which are neighborhoods with insanely high real estate prices.

* In the areas in/around the Tenderloin there are a huge number of "hotels" that are basically extended stay residences for people who can't afford any apartment in SF. They're a few hundred bucks a month and feature tiny, often dirty rooms with shared bathrooms and no kitchen. However they're all called "____ Hotel" so they'd appear in any blind analysis of the city.

Having a huge parking lot on your property in the middle of SF has to be foolish. At the very least it must be worth building a multi-level garage to save space. However, is it feasible to replace it with anything else? If you already have a parking lot, perhaps because it was totally sensible in 1932 or whenever it was originally built, what does it take to build something more valuable on that land today?

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+

      4 hotels $55-$110
      7 hotels $110-$160
     35 hotels $160-$220
    367 hotels $220+

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).

So the survey and results are pretty much meaningless.

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.

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.

This is a bit of a cheat, first because high lodging taxes are often created at the request of local hotel owners: it typically feeds a tourism-advertising slush fund. Also, we're now overrun by TIF, a scheme by which government loan guarantees for development are theoretically repaid by higher "taxes" on business in the developed area. In that case hotel guests are directly paying the bills for hotel investors.

I think your system sucks donkey ass. :)

The actual reason is a lack of sufficient pressure to change this practice.

:)

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!

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?

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.

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).

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.

It's fairly common for both business and vacation travelers to stay in Oakland and commute.

I hope Airbnb stays A Good Thing™ for a long time. I fear with its high valuation that it will only last so long, before sweeping changes are made that make it no longer worth it.

For now, I'm going to ride the train to the end of the line.

DISCLAIMER: I am an Airbnb host, but not in Cali.

http://www.sfhostels.org/

</rant>

Granted, there are some contract issues if the host rents the apartment instead of owning it, and there is a risk of some externalities (chronic noisy guests upsetting neighbors) which could be managed with light regulation... but surely the idea is a sound one which should be embraced and encouraged. Right?

And those would-be unionized hotel employees would be there to do useful work for fair pay, no? They're not charity cases and I should't feel bad or feel compelled to use their services if I don't need those services at all, right?

</counter-rant>

This smells like it might be the case that most hotels cost significantly less than the average but a few super ridiculously expensive ones jack up the average by a very large margin.

So, eh. San Francisco had rising labor costs to begin with, but bringing up the minimum wage can't be that much of a stretch.