Hanging out in San Francisco this past weekend I made another trip to the Westin Market Street. The sky was wonderfully clear in San Francisco and the temperature was a California coastal perfect at 65 degrees.

Wasn’t I surprised to see that in my stays at the Westin Market Street I still haven’t had a room with the preferred view. The Westin St. Francis Hotel is prominent on the left and the Grand Hyatt is the tall skyscraper on the right. The Fairmont Hotel tower is on the far right in the background with a flag.  Even a Golden Gate Bridge tower can be seen on a clear day from this side of the hotel.

I was in the right room at the right time last week. Perhaps 3326 next time?

westin-market-street-view 33rd floor

The room can make all the difference in a hotel. Sitting at 350 vertical feet above the street with a view of San Francisco is a higher stratosphere. There is about 150 square feet of glass in four large floor- to-ceiling windows allowing us to look over the city and skyline. This is a 33^rd floor corner suite of the San Francisco Westin Market Street hotel. I was impressed with the view.

Bed View from Room 3306, Westin Market Street Hotel, San Francisco

This is my second stay at the Westin Market Street in 2009. The Central California Coast is experiencing one of the driest rainy seasons in decades. It has rained on both of my hotel stays this year at Westin Market Street which limits the clarity of my digital photos.

 View of Third Street from Mission Street-facing-window Westin Market Street

3306 Corner Suite Sitting Room View along Third Street. Low building on left is San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA), between the St. Regis Hotel in the foreground and the white W Hotel skyscraper in photo center.

Three floor-to-ceiling windows face Third Street and look over a large open space in the center of blocks of skyscrapers. The high level open space from the eastern facing windows is due to a multistory parking garage and Starwood’s Palace Hotel occupying a full city block South of Market Street that is under ten stories high. The Palace Hotel is only 9 stories high and from the 33^rd floor of the Westin Market Street the view looks across a large city block before the tall business skyscrapers of equal height block the view of the San Francisco Bay to the east.

Palace Hotel, Starwood Hotels Luxury Collection, San Francisco

The large historic Palace Hotel, another Starwood property in the Luxury Collection brand, viewed from Westin Market Street Hotel. Originally an 1875 beauty and rebuilt in 1909 after the great earthquake. The hotel had an extensive remodel and retrofit after the 1989 earthquake. Cheap rooms at the Palace Hotel tend to be interior-wall-facing rooms on left side of hotel. These rooms have no views of San Francisco, but are quieter than Market Street facing rooms on the far left side.  

 Here is the view from a Palace Hotel 7th floor room looking to the Westin Market Street Hotel.

 View of Westin Market Street hotel from the Palace Hotel

Westin Market Street hotel is in photo center. Room 3306 is far left of hotel and the set of three windows fourth from top. The corner suite also has a window on the Mission Street side of the Westin hotel not visible from this angle.

Notice the open air parking garage shown here between the Palace Hotel and Westin Market Street hotel. Hearst Parking Center at 45 Third Street is directly across from the Westin Market Street hotel. Third Street is a pain to drive but come down Mission or Howard, stay on the right side of one-way, six-lane Third Street. About 100 yards past Mission St is the Hearst Center parking garage with a hotel guest special rate $20 per 24 hours. The catch is you can’t have in and out privileges. This garage is convenient, within a short block of the Palace Hotel, Westin Market Street, St. Regis, W Hotel, Marriott San Francisco, and Four Seasons and less than half the price of overnight parking at any of these hotels. 

Four Seasons Hotel is the skyscraper to the right of the Westin Market Street Hotel. The Paramount Building on the far left is a 43-story luxury rental apartment building directly across Mission Street from the St. Regis Hotel and Residences (not seen here). 

People-watching in the Paramount across from the Westin Market Street at the 300 foot level was like another TV. At this level on a Saturday night in this high rise neighborhood there were several dinner parties and lots of flash photos. The view must be even more entertaining at times from their angle.

The southern facing window looks across to other skyscraper residences including the St. Regis Residences and the W Hotel lining the left and Yerba Buena Gardens and the Moscone Convention center to the left. The view south is expansive and ships in the harbor are visible in the distance several miles away.

 View of San Francisco Bay looking south along Third Street San Francisco

Dusk over Third Street San Francisco from Room 3306, Westin Market Street Hotel. St. Regis Hotel and Residences is building at left edge of photo.

There is a 42-inch flat screen tv in the living room if you get bored with window views.

A Panasonic CD/radio on the coffee maker counter had potential, however, the reception was so poor we gave up trying to listen to the radio. I tried hanging the antenna on the doorknob, the coffee maker, and every location within reach of the wires.

And I forgot to grab CDs when I went back to the car to double check the street cleaning days for towing. You don’t want to leave your car on the street on towing day. Friday and Saturday night are not a problem. A $50 per day parking fee for the W, Westin Market, or St. Regis will seem cheap if you lose your car to the city of San Francisco.

The sign means beware if you are staying on Monday or Wednesday night. The cross street is no parking overnight on Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday. Don’t sweat it for Friday or Saturday overnights.

I parked for free by parking my car on Folsom Street, one block south of the W Hotel, at a meter that is free from 6pm Saturday to midnight Sunday when the street must be cleared for street cleaning on Monday morning. Tow days are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early am, so Folsom Street is no good if your hotel night is Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday. Other streets are on a Tuesday-Thursday schedule.

Westin Market Street has incredible views. The bar has been active most times we have come by.

Bar at Ducca, Westin Market Street (morning hours prior to activity)

It’s Sunday morning sleepy head. The pillow top mattress made the Westin bed nice to lounge in during the morning.

 Sitting room of Corner Premier Suite, Westin Market Street

Ducca restaurant service was great. Granted the restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived at 10:10 am for breakfast service that stops at 10:30am.  Lunch starts at 11:30 am.

Ducca Restaurant, Westin Market Street Hotel, San Francisco

Kelley liked Ducca. We had an enjoyable breakfast. These are stiff prices at about $11 for juice and coffee if you don’t order a menu item with two beverages included. Also, the restaurant menu did not have some of the breakfast items listed on room service menu like Eggs Benedict or Sourdough French Toast although the waiter said there would be no problem ordering them.

 Pancakes, fruit, and maple syrup at Ducca

Dine at the hotel restaurant Ducca Sunday through Wednesday and enjoy a three course pre fixe dinner for $30 or lunch from 11:30-2:00pm three course pre fixe menu is $20.

Floor 4 is Westin Workout room. I saw an open door near the workout room and the window view was all rooftop infra-structure of pipes and stuff. Floor 7 still has limited views since buildings are all around. The workout room was large and packed with athletes and yoga stretchers. There were lots of fit looking people. There is no swimming pool or spa tub at the Westin Market Street.

Parking and driving in this part of San Francisco is a major pain. The BART station at Montgomery Street brings you within one block of the hotel and is a much easier way to arrive than trying to navigate Third Street and drive over the sidewalks to pull into the Westin Market Street. This hotel has a difficult, narrow entrance with pillars to navigate a car through at a busy time.

 Lobby seating at Westin Market Street hotel

Room Rate History of the Westin Market Street over past six months:

The best part for guests is the fact that the Westin Market Street hotel is frequently the lowest priced Starwood hotel in the city of San Francisco.  The room rates dropped significantly in November 2008 when I was excited to see a $119 weekend rate. So far in 2009 the weekend rate frequently drops to $99. I’ve seen weekday rates as low as $109 which is usually at least $40 less than any other Starwood Hotel in downtown. Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf tends to be the lowest priced Starwood hotel during weekdays due to its location a couple of miles away from the central business district.  Sheraton Wharf rates drop to $120 to $130 during some weekdays but summer rates usually increase quite a bit. We will see where rooms in summer 2009 price out for hotels in San Francisco.

Rates change frequently at this hotel, more than the other Starwood hotels in San Francisco and a room rate of $179 one day may be $99 the next – and vice versa.

Room Floor matters big time at the 36-floor Westin Market Street hotel.

Your experience in a cheap Traditional room on Floors 4 to 7 may be a low-level view of the sides of buildings or hotel infrastructure.  These are the $99 room rates. Elite status or a paid upgrade offer may get you a higher floor with a better view.

Deluxe is the next category of rooms on Floors 8-14.  You are just now getting up to the breathing air in a section of the city with many 30 to 40 story buildings. A room facing southwest – the bulk of the hotel rooms are on the southwest facing side of the building – will have an open view over Yerba Buena Gardens, and along Third Street to see a part of the Bay. The massive Marriott San Francisco takes up a good portion of the air space viewed from these windows.

Grand Deluxe rooms are on Floors 15-26. The upper floors of this level will have expansive views.

Premier rooms are the highest ten floors of 27-36. Rooms are advertised as “the best” city views.  The aerial photos shown here are my “city view” photos from Floor 33.

The higher you go, the higher the rate.

Westin Market Street Hotel, San Francisco

I am a leisure traveler by years of training. When I spent over 100 nights a year in hotels as a business traveler in the early 90s, I accumulated plenty of miles and points, but dates ruled my travel instead of price. The fundamental difference between leisure and business travel is the focus on price. When no reimbursement is coming for your hotel expenses there is incentive to find lower room rates.

The next few months offer an unprecedented opportunity to earn free nights with Starwood and InterContinental Hotels Group. Many of my travel strategies are better suited for a flexible leisure traveler rather than a time-schedule-dependent business traveler. A leisure traveler planning to book multiple stays can save some significant cash by studying hotel rates over a period of time, a day or two or even a week or two before booking hotels. You only know you have scored a good hotel rate after you have seen enough room rate variation to determine what is a low rate for the particular hotel.

How I search hotel rates when planning a major leisure trip (and for Starwood Promotion):

1.    Set up a spreadsheet of hotels and dates for your destination. Here is a portion of my San Francisco Bay Area spreadsheet.

2.    Maintain notes of rate changes. Some hotels change rates up or down several times a week. (Red triangles in some cells are comment boxes with rate change notes.)

3.    Check the hotel website and a meta-search engine like Kayak.com periodically, once a day or every couple days. Look for discrepancies.

Spreadsheet for Starwood Hotel Rates in San Francisco Bay Area-May 1-7, 2009

San Francisco search area on StarwoodHotels.com displays 21 Starwood properties. The aloft Santa Clara hotel is listed but that hotel is not scheduled to open until 2011.

My basic planning strategy when organizing a trip is to make a spreadsheet of rates for my travel dates and follow hotel rates for several days or even weeks when planning an international trip or promotion fulfillment.

This chart is much larger than most rate charts I create due to the Starwood promotion and my ability to travel anywhere in the Bay Area for hotels. Normally I would have far fewer hotels in a more limited geographic area and fewer dates to check. The process is not so daunting when dealing with a three night stay in Seattle.

Setting up the chart takes time and then it is just a matter of performing periodic rate searches on StarwoodHotels.com to note changes in room rates. All the red triangle cells have a comment note showing rate changes and date. I can track the rate changes over a couple of weeks and note patterns for days when rates change, and the range of rates.

Some hotels in San Francisco like The Palace, Le Meridien, Westin Market Street, and Westin St. Francis have a room rate range of around $200 between the lowest rate nights and the highest rate nights. This means you may be able to book the room for $110 one night and another night the lowest rate will be $310. Choosing nights carefully for the best rates is a luxury leisure travelers have as a consumer strategy.

Finding Best Rate Guarantee Claims

·         Build a rate spreadsheet for your desired hotels and dates using StarwoodHotels.com rates (or whatever hotels you are tracking).

·         Check Kayak.com or some other meta-search engine for hotel rates.

·         Filter the rates for just Starwood Hotels (or whatever hotels you are tracking).

·         Look for discrepancies in price and room category. Sometimes a higher category room will have a better rate at an Online Travel Agency (OTA) like Hotels.com or Orbitz.com than you find at the hotel branded websites.

·         Submit a Best Rate Guarantee claim when you find a discrepancy. Starwood has an online claim form. Simply fill out the form listing the hotel, dates, and room type. List Starwood hotels lowest rate from a regular search which is usually some type of nonrefundable rate.

·          I have been finding discrepancies for more than 50% of the hotel nights I have booked this year. I think there is a lot of juggling with hotel rates in this economic climate.

My basic hotel booking rules:

·         Always try and book a refundable room, at least up to the day before arrival, in case I need to cancel. 

·         Once I have decided on a hotel or a small group of hotels, I check out the specific hotel website for special offer rates. There are sometimes incredible promotional deals for free meals or parking at the same low price or even lower.  Typically I will only find these on the hotel’s own website. (Sheraton Denver West had a special offer rate of $89 available on a Thursday night when the lowest rate I had found was $141 using AAA rate.)

·         I narrow my hotel selection to a small list of two or three hotels to examine rates closely for better room rate offers. It can take hours to check 20 hotel websites, find special offers, check sample rates for my projected hotel stay dates and compare to other rate options. Key is to balance search time with actual savings. Several hours to save $10 night on a room is not worthwhile. Saving $500 on a Hawaiian resort is worthwhile.

·         A $300 per night room is unlikely to be $109 on some other site. It happens, but rarely. Expect rate fluctuations of 10-25% over the course of a week or two in hotel rates on the hotel’s own sites. Knowing when to buy is a skill. Studying hotel rates typically allows me to book upper-upscale hotel rooms at rates around 50% of the average room rate for the hotel.

Rate Booked: These are the rates booked for my Starwood Hotel stays.

Lowest Rates: My $1,327 is actually $16 less than the lowest rates I found on StarwoodHotels.com. Several Best Rate Guarantee claims allowed me to pay a lower total rate than the lowest found on the Starwood hotel websites.  Two BRG claims were rates lower than found on Starwood Hotels.

Highest Rate for My Hotel Stay Dates: The rate I paid for my dates of booked hotel stays could have been as much as $450 more, 33% higher if I had booked the same type hotel room for the same date on a different day of my searches. I watched rates over a couple of weeks and booked during rate changes. Studying hotel rates over a couple of weeks allowed me to save $450 and earn 12,000 additional points from Best Rate Guarantee claims.

Highest Rate of Week: The problem for business travelers is the exorbitant hotel rates during conferences and events. My hotel spending for 14 stays could have actually been twice the amount I paid if I had needed to stay on different dates at the same hotel during the same week.

The same hotels could have been as high as $2,831 if I had booked different dates during the same week. I paid less than 50% on average over 14 nights at $1,327 compared to the highest room rates of $2,831.

Rate Difference: I saved $1,404 compared to the highest rates at the hotel during the same week of my stays.

I stayed at the Westin Market Street on a Saturday night for $110 on a Best rate Guarantee claim. The week before I could have booked the hotel on StarwoodHotels.com for $99. If I had needed Friday night the hotel would have cost $239.

Westin Market Street, San Francisco, Corner Suite 3306 – $110 rate

I rarely submitted hotel website Best Rate Guarantee claims before 2008. I don’t know if I just wasn’t looking hard enough or if the discrepancies are more frequent these days. I feel the latter is the case since I really have not changed my search strategies for hotel room rates. Meta-search engines like Kayak.com make the task much easier, but I have always been good about cross-checking rates on the hotel website with Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz.

Starwood Preferred Guest’s promotion for one free night after every two stays is keeping me busy. So far I have 15 Starwood Hotel stays booked for May and Starwood Hotels Best Rate Guarantee claims were submitted for 6 of my hotel stays. I completed my first two stays for the free nights promotion in San Francisco last weekend.

Most of the hotel stays I booked in May 2009 through Best Rate Guarantees are a few dollars more than the same price I could have booked on StarwoodHotels.com a day or two before.

Four of my BRG claims occurred on days when I checked rates and the rate increased on the Starwood site from the day before.  I checked Kayak.com and saw discrepancies. The rate had not yet increased on one of the online travel agencies – mostly Hotels.com and Orbitz.com. This situation resulted in four best rate guarantee claims that did not actually provide a lower rate than I could have booked the day before on StarwoodHotels.com.

The real benefit of Best Rate Guarantee is the 2,000 Starpoints or 10% reduced rate choice. One of my BRG claims is for a $59 room for one night. Choosing a 10% rate cut would only save $6.00. I think 2,000 Starpoints has ten times more value than a $6 savings on the room rate.  My highest BRG room rate was the Westin Market San Francisco at $110 based on a $109 Hotels.com rate. The Starwood hotel website had changed to $129. Taking the BRG 10% rate discount would have resulted in a savings of $11 on the room rate. The 2,000 Starpoints was worth the higher price.

The Westin Market Street had the greatest fluctuation of any San Francisco hotel I tracked over the past two weeks. The first rate check I made on Tuesday, April 21 for San Francisco hotels showed a Westin Market Street room rate of $99 for May 2. Rate went up to $109 on Thursday April 23. Rate went up again to $129 on Sunday April 26. I filed a BRG claim on Sunday April 26 based on a $109 Orbitz.com room rate and the claim was approved for a $110 BRG rate. There is generally a slight increase to the posted online travel agency room rate seen on Orbitz or Expedia due to small service fees imposed per reservation and in this case the BRG rate was $110 rather than the Orbitz.com $109 rate. The room rate later increased to over $269 per night, over $300, and then sold out for the night of my BRG claim.

Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco actually had a rate of $90 on Orbitz.com compared to $118 on StarwoodHotels.com for a date I booked.  Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf is the only hotel in my San Francisco searches where I found a significantly lower room rate with an online travel agency than any rate I had seen for that hotel on the Starwood websites over the past two weeks.  

On another BRG claim I saw a $3 discrepancy between Hotels.com and StarwoodHotels.com for the lowest priced room at the Four Points San Francisco Airport. One advantage of this hotel is free parking. I actually filed the BRG claim based on a junior suite higher category room and saved $10 on the StarwoodHotels.com rate for this room type.

The net effect of six BRG claims in my 15 Starwood reservations is I paid about $20 less than I would have paid through StarwoodHotels.com if I had booked when I saw the lowest rates. The value of the 12,000 Starpoints earned for approved BRG claims is much greater than the $20 saved.

The ultimate consideration in these Starwood Hotels May stays is the free nights earned from the current “two stays earn one night” promotion.

Penthouse Suite Kitchenette with toaster oven, Four Points San Francisco Airport

Marriott Hotels has a fast-track elite status offer for qualifying paid hotel nights from May 11 through June 26, 2009. This is a short window of 47 nights when your nights will count double towards 2009 elite qualification. Registration is required: http://joinmarriottrewards.com/doublerewards/RN09/

Marriott Rewards Elite Levels

The promotion offers the best value for someone who expects significant travel in 2009 and perhaps even more travel in 2010.

Rollover elite credit is potentially an even more valuable component of this Marriott Rewards offer.

Rollover Elite Nights to 2010 Elite Qualification Credit Offer

http://www.marriott.com/marriott.mi?page=eliterollover

Marriott has a unique offer as an additional component of this promotion to assist members with elite status in 2010. Every night you stay in 2009 above the elite threshold you earn will rollover for 2010.

How Rollover Elite Nights works.

A Marriott Rewards member who stays 20 hotel nights during the 47-night promotion period will accrue 40 nights of elite status.  Assume you only stay another 6 nights during 2009 and complete the 2009 calendar year with 46 elite qualifying nights. You finish 2009 just 4 nights shy of Gold elite and 36 nights above Silver elite.

Normally you would start January 1, 2010 with 0 elite qualifying nights.

Rollover elite nights from Marriott Rewards will rollover the 36 extra nights above Silver elite to start your 2010 elite qualifying credit nights at 36 rather than 0. You basically have Silver elite locked in for 2011 and you only need to stay another 14 elite qualifying nights during 2010 to earn Marriott Gold for 2011. Or stay just 39 nights in 2010 to reach Platinum elite and maintain that status through February 2012.

Loyalty Traveler Analysis:

This is your opportunity to strike out for elite if you desire high level Marriott elite status but have a travel pattern that typically does not accumulate adequate nights during the year to reach the 50 or 75 night elite threshold.

The traveler who typically reaches Marriott Gold at 50 nights can use this promotion to push for Platinum elite. And if you do not make it to 75 nights in 2009 for Platinum elite, then you will be able to rollover the nights you earned above 50 nights in 2009 to have a jumpstart towards elite in 2010.

A road warrior can just go for the desired elite status. Some Marriott Rewards members may actually be better off not reaching high level elite in 2009 and using the rollover offer to focus on elite status for travel in 2010 and 2011. Depending on your hotel stay pattern for 2009 and 2010 you may favor finishing 2009 short of your desired elite status to take advantage of needing fewer qualifying nights in 2010 to earn elite through 2011.

Calculating Elite Rollover Nights

The time frame of the Double Nights promotion at just 47 days means Marriott Rewards is forcing a commitment to Marriott Hotels at the same time both Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) and InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) are offering free nights for every two stays (SPG) or two nights (IHG).

This is a good offer from Marriott Rewards designed to reward guests with double nights for a short period now in 2009. The potential to reward guests with easier qualification for elite status in 2010 and 2011 is the more enticing aspect of this promotion in my opinion.

Marriott Hotels is offering Rewards members a fast-track to the hard-earned elite status normally only reached by hotel road warriors. At the same time, Starwood and IC Hotels Group are offering free nights in 2009 for guests who have shorter-term loyalty goals.

Marriott is seeking a long-term commitment from hotel guests. Time will tell if the lure of elite is a more effective strategy than free nights.

Marriott Rewards Hotel brands: Marriott Hotels and Resorts, J.W. Marriott, Renaissance Hotels, Courtyard, Residence Inn, Fairfield Inn, TownePlace Suites, SpringHill Suites.

Ritz-Carlton Hotels is part of Marriott Hotels and Marriott Rewards points can be used for Ritz-Carlton free nights, however, Ritz-Carlton stays do not earn Marriott Rewards points or elite qualifying credit.

Hotel Chatter’s newsletter alerted me to this special room rate offer yesterday for stays next weekend at the Phoenix Arizona Biltmore, a new member of Hilton Hotels Waldorf Astoria Collection. The Mother’s Day special offer rates are valid for stays up to 4 nights, from Friday May 8 to Tuesday, May 12.

Sunday May 10 is Mother’s Day. 

The deal must be booked today, May 1, 2009 by 10pm local hotel time to get rates as low as $80 per night for this luxury desert resort hotel.

http://www.arizonabiltmore.com/discoveroffers/

(Be sure to type “mom” in the Group/Convention Code box to bring up the special offer rates.)

Loyalty traveler analysis: The real deal I see on this promotion is the opportunity to book a luxury hotel suite at fire sale prices. A diamond ring may say you love her, but the Presidential Suite at the Biltmore Hotel at $261 per night may not set you back as much as a diamond and will be almost as memorable, although the photos of your suite will not impress her friends like a rock on the finger. The regular rate for this suite next weekend is $749 per night.

You can book online or also book by phone at 1-800-950-0086 and ask for the Mom special offer rate.  Low rates are available for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights on May 8-11.

Sample room rates for Mother’s Day Weekend:

·         Classic King $80

·         Resort King $90

·         Premier King $97

·         King Club Room $115

·         Deluxe Club Room $129

·         Biltmore Suite $143

·         Grand Suite $153

·         Villa Suite $244

·         Presidential Suite $261