SAN FRANCISCO With its location on Post Street near Union Square,
the Pan Pacific San Francisco sits in prime position to attract
leisure travelers seeking downtown San Francisco’s cosmopolitan
pleasures. Now officials at the 330-room deluxe hotel hope the
city’s expanding cultural attractions will provide even more of a
draw to the hotel and the city, where hotel occupancy numbers
continue to lag. The Pan Pacific finished 2002 with a 69 percent
occupancy level, according to Geraldine Korss, the property’s
director of sales and marketing. That actually compared favorably
with a citywide average of 65.4 percent, according to statistics
from PKF Consulting. Korss expects occupancy to remain flat in
2003, hoping like many other hotel executives in post-9/11 America
that targeting regional drive-in business will keep things steady.
After a dip in year-to-year numbers for February, occupancy
rebounded in March, Korss noted, and hotel officials hope the
uptick in visitors will continue through the summer. If it’s
upscale, urbane travelers the Pan Pacific wants to attract, it
certainly boasts the amenities to bring them in. Its elegant rooms
feature two televisions (one in the bathroom), down comforters and
pillows and a personal valet call button, and the public areas
including the hotel’s 21-story-high atrium lobby feature marble
foyers and Oriental-style carpets. The Pan Pacific clearly keeps
the luxury traveler in mind with its other amenities, including
on-site auto detailing; a “luxury locker,” long-term storage of
clothing for repeat guests; complimentary car service; and “Airfare
to Go,” a box lunch for departing guests. Of special note: The
hotel fluffs its pillows to guests’ specifications with the help of
an on-site pillow-fluffing machine (at check-in, the clerk asked if
I’d prefer medium, firm or extra-firm.) “We discovered that many
frequent travelers carry their own pillows to ensure sleeping
comfort while on the road,” General Manager Jacques Villeneuve
explained. On our recent visit, my wife and I appreciated the Pan
Pacific’s location. It’s a block’s walk from the bustle of Union
Square, yet the noise doesn’t reach the Pan Pacific. The hotel has
a formidable restaurant in Pacific, which features a blend of
French and California cuisines. And the subdued, elegant vibe of
the adjacent Pacific Bar appeared to be drawing in plenty of guests
during my stay. But at the end of the day quite literally the
success of a hotel comes down to the comfort of its rooms. After
taking in some of the city’s newest cultural attractions including
a theater matinee and an art museum, plus dinner at Ghirardelli
Square we returned to the hotel and comfortably ensconced ourselves
in our room, a roomy deluxe unit that overlooked the city to the
west with the Golden Gate Bridge peeking over the top of the
skyline. Sadly, we never did find a reason to use the personal
valet button in our room, though that’s probably a sign that the
Pan Pacific deftly anticipates the needs of its guests. And the
specially fluffed pillows didn’t hurt.
