Now’s a Good Time to Visit the Lady by the Bay

Like a high-class beauty whose reputation has been scurrilously sullied, San Francisco has been forced to take daring measures to demonstrate that her charms are undiminished and her standards intact.

The nasty jolt of Oct. 17, 1989, sent her admirers running in all directions and left her temporarily bereft. Her regulars, those unflappable conventioneers, returned in short order. But the others--the pleasure seekers, convention spouses, families, honeymooners and mad impetuous flingers--have been disgracefully derelict.

It is an intolerable situation for a lady whose financial well-being is so dependent upon the kindness of strangers. But, never one to bemoan an ugly turn of fate, San Francisco has fixed her face, slipped into something comfortable and leaped into action.

What that means to the average vacationer is that right now a holiday in San Francisco may be less expensive than at any time in recent memory. Some hotels, especially those that do not cater to conventions, have slashed rates, a few by as much as 50%, and many are offering other inducements such as sightseeing options at bargain prices.

One of the city’s toniest hostelries, the Mark Hopkins Hotel at No. 1 Nob Hill, has been hawking rooms for $99. The accommodations are not the Mark’s top-of-the-line, but they normally rent for $175 a night, and even historians are hard-pressed to recall the last time one could stop atop Nob Hill for less than $100 a night.

Roland Schuster, general manager of the Mark, said he is determined to attract new business. He has been reaching out to the European market with an airline tie-in that runs to the end of March. The package, offered through the German carrier Lufthansa, gives European travelers a $90 rate on a room at the Mark.

“January was down 15-plus percentage points for us,” Schuster said. “February was very strong, but one reason for that is our aggressive stance in the marketplace. We hope by the middle of the year to be back up to last year’s occupancy rate.”

The $99 deal has been extended through the end of March, and others may soon be forthcoming. “When we get windows of opportunity--when the supply is big and demand is not so big--we will offer special rates and create new customers who would not have thought of Nob Hill,” Schuster said.

San Francisco’s normal hotel occupancy, according to the San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, is 69%. That’s one of the highest in the nation. After the earthquake, the figure plummeted to below 20%, then quickly began to rebound. Only two conventions bolted. The California League of Cities rescheduled to December and Nissan took a rain check, according to the bureau’s John Plain.

But Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the city’s main tourist lures, continues to suffer. The Holiday Inn there has reduced rates from $142 to $69. Jill Gustavson of San Francisco Reservations, a booking agency that works hand in glove with many city hotels, said the five Holiday Inns in San Francisco have cut rates across the board from 32% to 52%. Rooms that usually cost about $100 a night are going for $64 at Civic Center and $89 at Union Square.

Those rates will hold through April, Gustavson said. In the Union Square area--convenient to all the posh department stores--rooms are available at the Monticello Inn for $69, while junior suites can be as little as $89. The Orchard is offering rooms with queen-size beds for $80 and kings for $90, according to Gustavson. The elegant Portman has extended its $150 per night weekend rates (for a deluxe room with queen-size bed and large bath) to include weekdays, and San Francisco Reservations has a special arrangement with the inn to offer rooms from $165 to $195. Typical rates are $270 to $310.

The agency also has a running agreement with the Mark Hopkins to book “their superior rooms for $120--and that’s a 50% discount,” Gustavson said. “The $99 special was for their standard rooms.”

She emphasized strongly that all bargain rates are on a space-available basis, but added that if travelers are a bit flexible in their scheduling and call as far in advance as possible, her agency can almost always find an appealing package. For toll-free information and bookings, phone (800) 333-8996.

Gustavson said that traditionally August, September and October are the busiest months for the San Francisco tourist trade, and “my sense of it is that once that strong season has come and gone, it (the slack time) will all be behind us. Already we’re seeing less of the hesitancy (to come to San Francisco). Nobody’s asking about the earthquake anymore when they call about reservations--and they definitely were (asking) all the way into mid-January.”

The best hotel values, she believes, will continue through May, but as the summer season arrives, the specials will probably begin to thin out.

The Hyatt Regency on the Embarcadero has taken a different approach to attract the pleasure seekers. “San Francisco . . . By Land, By Air, By Sea” is a trio of bargain-rate lodging/sight-seeing packages. All include one night for two persons in deluxe accommodations and before or after-tour beverages in the hotel’s revolving rooftop restaurant, Equinox.

“Land” ($250) offers a two-hour guided tour up and down the city’s hills in a stretch limousine. “Air” ($365) features an hourlong flight over the city and the Northern California coastline aboard a vintage DC-3 airplane. “Sea” ($255) includes a nighttime dinner-dance cruise aboard the 151-foot yacht City of San Francisco.

“What we are concentrating on now is selling San Francisco as a destination,” said Charles McElroy, the hotel’s general manager. “In the past, we’ve sold Hyatt Hotels, but the challenge now is to get the individual, the discretionary traveler, to buy San Francisco as a destination.”

In other words, whereas the pre-quake competition used to be hotel versus hotel, the post-quake scenario has the hotels acting more or less in concert to sell the city.

It is difficult to determine with precision just how much of the vacancy factor can be attributed to fears engendered by the earthquake because many other elements come into play. For instance, there are those who believe that the city has too many hotel rooms, that overbuilding might well cause the occupancy rate never to be as high again.

On the actual day of the earthquake, for example, the controversial new downtown Marriott Hotel (critics say it looks like a giant Wurlitzer juke box) had its grand opening, adding 1,500 rooms to the city’s lodging pool (now 22,000 plus).

Although primarily a convention venue, the Marriott is feeling the hunger pangs that empty rooms produce. Business is “definitely not” up to expectations, said marketing director Bill Thompson. So the hotel is offering a $129 weekend rate that includes breakfast for two, as well as a midweek $169 single.

As soon as the hotel’s occupancy reaches 95%, those prices will climb to $149 and $180 respectively. The Marriott may have had the most inauspicious grand opening in hotel history, but the structure rode out the quake with little damage. Thompson said a leg broke off a grand piano, causing it to kneel, and a sprinkler in the rooftop lounge went into unexpected service, causing a good deal of water damage, but all is back to normal now. In fact, precious little damage was incurred by any of the major hotels, according to Bob Begley, executive director of the Hotel Council of San Francisco.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect of the dip in tourism is that there is plenty of elbow room in San Francisco these days. The Gargantuan serpentine normally choking the Powell Street turntable as would-be passengers queue up for little cable cars that climb halfway to the stars (and then nose down to Fisherman’s Wharf) has been reduced to a quick trickle.

Restaurants and merchants in general say business is good because locals have stepped in to fill seats and aisles left vacant by absent tourists. Nick Peyton, maitre d’hotel at popular Masa’s restaurant, said three weeks’ notice still is required to secure reservations for prime time on Saturday nights, but for Tuesday through Friday the demand is less.

“Depending on how flexible (diners) can be for time, they might get in (by) calling a couple of days ahead,” Peyton said. A three-week lead-time may sound like the height of presumption in Peoria, but epicures fly all the way from capitals in Asia just to sup from Masa’s kitchens.

Peyton said it is easy to discern the tourists from the home folks because “businessmen eat in groups of six and eight. Locals eat in twos and fours. Also, you can tell by the telephone numbers they leave--which ones are private homes and which are hotels.”

In December, Fritz Arko, president and general manager of Pier 39, the ersatz New England fishing village retail complex at Fisherman’s Wharf, was seriously concerned about the drop-off in business. He said he noticed shopkeepers starting sales early and extending them longer than usual, and indicated that some marketing measures might be in order if business did not pick up during the holidays.

A packet of coupons--good for discounts at most of the 110 shops or a free treat at most of the 12 restaurants--that initially was offered only to conventioneers now is available to anyone who asks. They’re being distributed to hotels or can be obtained by calling Pier 39. But, according to Kathy Paver, Pier 39’s vice president of marketing, no dramatic inducements are being offered to draw tourists to the complex. “Forty percent of our traffic is locals, anyway,” she said.

Ironically, the earthquake added a new attraction to the pier. “We now have a population of sea lions that has taken over K-Dock in the marina (beside the pier),” Paver said, adding that the animals are drawing big crowds. The sea lions used to hang around pier 45 where fishing boats off-loaded, but that pier was closed due to quake damage so the sea lions moved to where the action is--the better to hustle tourists.

Nine days after the earthquake, the Convention & Visitors’ Bureau produced a beautiful video of the city in an effort to allay fears fed by the media’s incessant replays of disaster footage. The tape accompanied Mayor Art Agnos and his dog-and-pony show in late November on a tour of Chicago, Washington and New York to wave the “Back in Business” banner. And a $300,000 advertising campaign deluged the nation’s top 12 markets to bolster the “Everybody’s Favorite City” image.

Soon afterward, Conde Nast Traveler (in a story written before the quake) named San Francisco the second-most delectable city (after Florence, Italy) in the world. And then the Berlin Wall was breached, which secretly thrilled city fathers because it knocked the quake off page one and the 11 o’clock news.

Undoubtedly those events and others did wonders for San Francisco’s ego and helped rekindle tourists’ interest, but residual earthquake jitters are understood and profoundly respected in the City by the Bay. San Francisco may have rebounded swiftly, but no one makes light of what happened the day the earth failed to stand still.

Lives were lost. People suffered. The fabled lady repaired her makeup, but scars remain in the Marina district where elegant apartment buildings collapsed and burned. Massive wooden supports beneath the Embarcadero Freeway stand as solemn and scary reminders of that fateful day.

So if San Francisco is feeling saucy and sexy again--eager for more beaux and ready for good times to roll, it’s not because the city has forgotten those who perished in the October disaster. It’s because she remembers them, honors them and looks to the future.

Going Back to San Francisco: San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau, 201 Third St., San Francisco, (415) 974-6900; San Francisco Visitors’ Information Center, P.O. Box 6977, San Francisco, (415) 391-2000; San Francisco Reservations, 22 Second St., 4th Floor, San Francisco, (415) 227-1500, or call toll-free (800) 333-8996.

* SAN FRANCISCO BARGAINS

Mature travelers will find even better buys by the bay. Page 22