Costa Mesa-Based Hotel Chain Buys 16th Property : Acquisition: Japanese-owned Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts purchases the 330-room Portman-San Francisco luxury hotel.
Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts, an international hotel chain based here, said Friday that it had bought the Portman-San Francisco hotel for an undisclosed sum and will rename it the Pan Pacific Hotel San Francisco.
The 330-room luxury hotel, a block from Union Square on Post Street, opened in 1987.
The Portman becomes the 16th hotel in the Pan Pacific chain, a Japanese-owned operation with hotels in 13 countries in Asia and North America.
Pan Pacific said it bought the Portman as part of a plan to buy or build hotels in all the big cities of the Pacific Rim. It’s now looking for a hotel to buy in Los Angeles and in Sydney, Australia. The company said it will also soon announce plans to build a resort on Guam.
The medium-size San Francisco hotel, designed by renowned hotel architect John Portman, has a 21-story atrium and upscale trappings that include lavish marble bathrooms and original art.
Room rates start at $175 a night and go up to $350.
Pan Pacific was formed in a merger last year of two hotel chains owned by the Tokyo-based Tokyu Corp., a conglomerate that operates more than 300 companies in businesses from transportation to department stores.
One of the hotel chains was based in Hawaii and one in Tokyo.
Tokyu moved the merged chains to Southern California last year to heighten Pan Pacific’s visibility on the western edge of the Pacific Rim. The chain’s chairman, who is Japanese, remains in Tokyo, but the day-to-day operations are run from Costa Mesa.
“We want to be known more as an international company, so we located the corporate offices in the middle of a huge North American market,” said Steve Buckley, vice president of marketing. “We’re well-known in Asia but not known at all now in North America.”
The United States is also a much less expensive place to lease an office and do business than crowded and expensive Tokyo, Pan Pacific officials said.
The chain’s Southern California holdings consist of the 505-room Pan Pacific Hotel in Anaheim and a new hotel under construction in San Diego.
The company just opened a hotel in Australia and is building another one in Malaysia.
The company’s luxury hotels boast an average occupancy rate of about 70%, Buckley said.
Revenues are projected to rise from $178 million last year to $250 million this year, boosted by increased business at the hotels, higher room rates and currency fluctuations in the countries in which Pan Pacific does business.
