The headline from an article on San Francisco hotels going under caught my eye just now.

Hotel Owners Start to Write Off San Francisco as Business Nosedives
City’s lodging business has been squeezed by crime and other quality-of-life issues

YEESH that’s gruesome.

…San Francisco’s once thriving hotel market is suffering its worst stretch in at least 15 years, pummeled by the same forces that have emptied out the city’s office towers and closed many retail stores.

There seems to be a lot of gruesome news to go around in that city.

They’ve closed so many retail stores that the firm which owns the buildings for the mall which housed the downtown flagship Nordstrom’s, etc. announced today they’re turning the whole flaming mess back to the bank and walking away.

Westfield is giving up its namesake San Francisco mall in the wake of Nordstrom’s planned closure, surrendering the city’s biggest shopping center to its lender after foot traffic and sales plunged during the pandemic.

The company stopped making payments on a $558 million loan, and Westfield and its partner, Brookfield Properties, started the process of transferring control of the mall at 865 Market St. this month.

“For more than 20 years, Westfield has proudly and successfully operated San Francisco Centre, investing significantly over that time in the vitality of the property. Given the challenging operating conditions in downtown San Francisco, which have led to declines in sales, occupancy and foot traffic, we have made the difficult decision to begin the process to transfer management of the shopping center to our lender to allow them to appoint a receiver to operate the property going forward,” the company said.

There won’t be much fancy shopping for tourists to do downtown anymore, but, then again, it’s sounds as if there aren’t many tourists to begin with. For some reason, they haven’t found their post-COVID way back to San Francisco as they have to other cities, even if those other cities also suffer from well publicized problems.

…Hotel owners in New York and Los Angeles are filling nearly as many rooms this year as they did in 2019, according to hotel-data firm STR. Their revenue per available room exceeds what it was before the pandemic.

But in San Francisco, hotels are still struggling badly in both occupancy and room rates compared with before the pandemic. Revenue per available room was nearly 23% lower in April compared with the same month in 2019.

…Overnight visits to the city were down 31% last year compared with 2019, according to the San Francisco Travel Association. Travel from China and other parts of Asia, previously a big part of the tourist equation, are still lagging though domestic tourism is improving.

San Francisco’s hotel market is also heavily dependent on convention travel, and concerns over public safety are prompting groups and associations to shift their business to markets like Las Vegas, said Michelle Russo, chief executive of hotelAVE, a consulting firm. That means slower business for San Francisco hotels today and in coming years, since many groups book convention space years in advance.

In part, “because of that, hotels are not worth as much today as they were pre-Covid in San Francisco,” Russo said.

Part of San Francisco’s issue is the tech drain – the companies are not putting visiting workers or consultants up in rooms as freely or often or in the numbers at a pop they were before. Many of the companies are actively downsizing, and those free-spending days are long gone, if the company is even in existence anymore.

It’s not that the city isn’t trying to lure people back.

The ad is from San Francisco Travel which a non-profit in charge of promoting and advertising #SanFrancisco to tourists. 68% of their comes from a 1%-1.5% Tourism Improvement District fee charged by certain hotels in addition to the 14% hotel tax. #Travel https://t.co/gZNBzkFX6Z

— Citizenj17 ✝️🇺🇸 (@citizenj17) June 4, 2023

It’s just that it keeps stepping on itself with the wrong lures and bad news.

San Francisco’s tourism board launched a $6M ad campaign to overcome the city’s global reputation as a drug and crime-ridden hell hole. Six days later, the owner of two of the city’s biggest hotels announced it was abandoning them because it lost faith that the city can recover. pic.twitter.com/uaZRXWpD3R

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) June 6, 2023

Contrast that with Chicago, for instance. For all the chaos and nightmarish qualities of life in Lori Lightfoot’s city, the summer of 2022 saw tourism increase 60%!

I know, I KNOW!

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE AND WHO ARE THE NUTJOBS?!

But they came.

With the summer travel season officially underway, Chicago’s tourism promoters said Thursday that the city is continuing its rebound in visitor spending and visitation compared with pandemic lows.

Choose Chicago said nearly 48.9 million domestic and overseas visitors hit the town in 2022, an amount 60% higher than in 2021. The total is about 80% of the nearly 61 million visitors the agency tabulated for 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.

It also said Chicago visitors spent nearly $17 billion in 2022, 89% of the level in 2019.

Must have been Cubs and deep-dish pizza fans. Only thing I can figure. The city is planning on seeing more of them this summer.

Good luck, Mayor Johnson.

New York City has a pulse in spite of everything it keeps doing to itself. You can ask yourself how that’s possible, but they do. NYC is crawling back upwards and they need every penny. (I’m not including the headline because I refuse to be held responsible for you spitting all over your ‘puter screen.)

…When the pandemic took hold in 2020, many prepared their last words for the Big Apple — and many ultimately left.

But the city that doesn’t sleep also doesn’t give up. Its rebound has been swift, particularly in real estate and tourism, noted Resonance Consultancy, the global real estate and tourism advisement group that ranks US urban centers each year.

More than 61 million tourists are projected to visit New York in 2023, the report states. Up from 33 million in 2021 and 56 million last year, that number is creeping back toward the 70 million mark achieved in 2019.

But in San Francisco, there doesn’t seem to be any optimism other than in the real estate scavenger community on the horizon.

Interesting story on a major company abandoning a huge San Francisco hotel to its lenders, due to poor projections for recovery in San Francisco's business travel, tourism and convention market. https://t.co/B26Hpex6RB

— Douglas B. Rogers 🎣🏌🏻‍♂️🥃🏔️🍳😎🏒🏈 (@Rogers26B) June 11, 2023

Undoubtably, the stories shared by the visitors who do come aren’t helping the traffic to grow.

Tourism plays a vital role in San Francisco's economy, but the sight of bodies, fecal matter, and needles on our streets is driving visitors away. Bringing with them Back Home dark stories of what was once The Paris Of The West but is now a post apocalyptic ghost town…

— WORLD PEACE MOVEMENT (@darren_stallcup) June 5, 2023

Forbes and other online news organizations are trying to gin up some enthusiasm with lukewarm “Should you visit San Francisco” articles. But I’m not sure mealy mouthed “Yeah, the crime is bad, stores are shuttered, they really have a poo map, but the food is GREAT” pieces really help anyone, less mind shine a positive light where not much light can be shone.

San Fran’s gonna have to dig themselves out of this one themselves.

And when CHICAGO is beating the pants off of you for a place people want to visit?

I have my doubts..