San Francisco Hospitality Market Report

San Francisco’s elongated recovery faces additional roadblocks. The metro’s hospitality sector is enduring a unique set of challenges amid record-high office vacancy, a slow return of international travelers from Asia, concerns over safety in the city, and recent tech industry headwinds. This combination has stunted the post-pandemic momentum that other locations across the country have benefited from recently. Entering this year, RevPAR in San Francisco had the most ground to make up relative to 2019 among major U.S. hospitality markets. While tourism from Asian countries has started to pick up and some major events are taking place, like the APEC Leaders’ Meeting — which drew an estimated 20,000 attendees last November — other hurdles remain fierce. For example, in early 2024, the Moscone Center announced that several conferences or events slated for this year had been canceled. Twilio terminated a contract to host an annual event that typically generates 5,500 room nights, while Samsung, Workday, Meta and VMware also scaled back plans. As a result, Moscone Center events have an estimated 409,000 hotel rooms under contract for 2024, compared to 664,000 in 2023 and nearly 1 million during pre-pandemic years.