San Francisco Hotels and Covid Five Years Later: Part I

Five years ago, the Covid 19 Pandemic struck, upending all of our lives.  Be you Tom Hanks or an essential worker, we all had to start from scratch and figure out how to create a language for dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic.  Now that it's been half a decade, I thought I would take this opportunity to see how the city, and hospitality, is faring in 2025.

San Francisco's Union Square and Nob Hill Hotels

During the pre-pandemic glory days of 2019, we were in the throes of the Go-Go Tech Boom.  Hotels were doing well, and billions of dollars were flowing into the city.  Case-in-point: Four of the city's ten tallest buildings (including the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building west of Chicago) were all built in the five years before the pandemic, and are within one block of each other.  That is how much money was flowing into San Francisco.

The slow drip of the Internet replacing concierge began with glacial speed, but it began.

The first indication that a concierge was expendable was when one of my former staff got a job at a mid-level boutique hotel.  After 11 years, he was replaced by a concierge kiosk, which looked like a large slot machine and a display screen offering different tabs: One for wineries, one for sightseeing tours, etc.   

The irony was that few people used it and ended up asking the bellman for recommendations.  In the end it was removed.  They never hired him back and, I guess, let the guests fend for themselves.

One of the disturbing trends which began slowly, but accelerated by the pandemic, is what they call contactless check-in, or more appropriately should be called, human-less check-in. Remember what a chore it was to arrive at a hotel, have someone greet you, welcome you, and then help you?  

As you can see from the photo, now the burden of interacting with other people has been removed, and an antiseptic soulless hotel experience can be yours.

The Latest in Self-Service Check-In Kiosk Technology, Minus the Humans

I spoke to the manager of this hotel.  With the exception of an under-paid, overly exploited janitor. I assume, because even when he was just sitting he looked exasperated.  This poor fellow was also pressed into service as a bellman, front desk, concierge, and housekeeper when an actual human was needed.  Strangely, he was the only other person in the building.

The manager enthusiastically, and with a straight face, shared with me the prevailing philosophy of this new trend in hotels. He gleefully said without irony, "We honor the guest to own the check-in process!"   

Double-take, Wha?!   

"I am assuming your rates are lower than similar hotels, given that you don't have the overhead of a staffed front/bell/concierge/valet desk?" I asked. Shockingly, he proudly proclaimed, "No. We charge the same rate as other comparable hotels."

Legendary former Sir Francis Drake Hotel doorman, and colleague, Tom Sweeney, retired in January 2020. I stopped by the hotel to honor his 43 years of service on his last day. In between the dozens (hundreds, really) of well-wishers, he shared one of the reasons he was retiring was not because he was in his late 60s. He is a marathon runner and could probably do the job for another 20 years. He said that few people take taxis or shuttles anymore as Uber and Lyft had supplanted those ancillary sources of income. 

In addition to that, he said fewer and fewer people carry cash on them, so they don't tip. Despite the fact he is a native-born San Franciscan, who has an encyclopedic level of knowledge about the city, I observed more people checked their phones than asked

him for directions.

Even though the concierge profession was endangered, it wasn't an endangered species yet.  I had a guest come to my desk who was in San Francisco for the first time.  He told me he went online, looked up, and printed out, "Best restaurants in Chinatown."  He then presented to me a document the size of a James Michener novel.  After all of that, he still needed a learned individual to decipher his options. 

The concierge was the Internet, before the Internet.

San Francisco Adapting to the Pandemic in March of 2020

In March of 2020, the pandemic hit.  Everyone was devastated by it in one way or another.  Other industries peripheral to hospitality (such as rental cars and event planners) saw their business adversely affected, but they still managed to stay in business.

The pandemic of 2020 upended hospitality the world over, like nothing I'd ever seen. From Cape Town, South Africa to Anchorage, Alaska there was not one corner of this planet where hospitality was not devastated. You couldn't just pack your suitcase and move to another city because every city's hotel business was decimated. I can't think of an example of an entire industry shutting down so completely, worldwide and in 24 hours.

Then we got the vaccine and the boosters.  Infection and death rates fell.  We were ready to stop wearing sweatpants, turn off the Netflix, and return to normal.  Since so much of the city is dependent on conventions and international travel, it was clear that those visitors were coming back anytime soon.