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San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Hotel prices are sky-high in this part of the Bay Area — nearly twice that of S.F.
Napa County hotel rooms are the most expensive in the Bay Area — and nearly double the price of San Francisco rooms. The average daily room rate in Napa County in 2024 was $412 compared to $212 in San Francisco, according to data from hospitality data analyst STR. This year, the difference is even higher: $440 in Napa County in June versus $216 in San Francisco and $230 in Napa's rival wine region, Sonoma County. Napa County 2025 hotel rates peaked in May, topping $500. The data underscores a widespread perception that Napa Valley has become too expensive. Hotel rates have remained relatively steady since they surged during the 2022 post-pandemic boom, though hotel occupancy is down roughly 10% from 2019, according to Linsey Gallagher, CEO of Visit Napa Valley, the county's tourism marketing agency. Meanwhile, local tasting room traffic is also in a years-long slump. As the wine industry's global crisis deepens, some Napa winery owners fear that local hotel rates are compounding their problems. 'We have such beautiful and amazing hotels here, but people are just flabbergasted by the prices,' said Christi Coors Ficeli, owner of Goosecross Cellars in Yountville. 'We talk about this all the time. It is so unaffordable.' Napa Valley hotel prices are arguably in line with the region's wine tasting fees, which are the highest in California. In 2024, a standard tasting in Napa Valley cost $80 on average, according to a 2025 Silicon Valley Bank wine industry report. (The second-highest tasting fees are in Sonoma County, where they average $55.) But many wineries have begun to reverse course, offering dynamic pricing, discounted micro-tastings and even free tastings to attract more visitors. According to Wine Business Monthly's 2025 Tasting Room Survey Report, 32% of Napa Valley wineries have recently lowered tasting fees, or are considering doing so. Hotels, on the other hand, aren't budging. The STR data shows that room rates surged in 2022 — jumping to an average of $442 a night in 2022 and peaking at $522 that August — and haven't changed much since. The stark difference between Napa Valley's hotel prices and those in other Bay Area markets, like San Francisco, ultimately comes down to three factors, said Gallagher: Napa Valley has 'fewer hotels,' which tend to be smaller and 'more luxury' properties than other Bay Area destinations. Of Napa County's 120 hotels, 70 have 25 rooms or fewer, according to STR data. The county has 5,400 total rooms, compared to 8,300 in Sonoma County and 34,000 in San Francisco. Luxury hotels, like Meadowood and Auberge du Soleil, account for roughly 50% of Napa Valley hotels, said Michael Stathokostopoulos, senior director of hospitality analytics at CoStar (STR's parent company). That's 'one of the highest concentrations in the country.' Economy and midscale hotels, the lowest of six hotel tiers that STR tracks, make up about 5% of Napa County lodging, he said. That number is so small that the company doesn't even report data for these tiers in Napa County. Since the pandemic, Napa Valley has added two large-scale luxury resorts, where rooms typically cost above $1,000 a night: the Four Seasons Napa Valley in Calistoga and the 700-acre Stanly Ranch, the region's third Auberge property, in Napa. Room rates are highest in Yountville, home of the French Laundry: $682 on average year-to-date. According to the city's transient occupancy tax (TOT) data, the average Yountville room rate in May was $958, up from $825 the previous year. The collected tax revenue from May — just shy of $1 million — was the highest in Yountville's history, according to the TOT report. More affordable options do exist, said Gallagher, especially in American Canyon, just south of Napa, which has an average 2025 room rate of $155. In Napa, where the average room rate of $328 is roughly $100 below the county average, the 90-room Cambria (now renamed the Knoll Hotel) offers rates for under $200. Still, despite high prices and inflation, Gallagher noted that luxury hotels are 'outperforming' the other options: Luxury hotel occupancy is up 4% year-to-date and rates are up 2%. 'From an economic standpoint, those luxury customers have not yet been impacted at the level (of others),' she said Napa County isn't the only destination whose rates continue to increase. To offset softer demand in recent years, Stathokostopoulos said most U.S. hotels have raised rates by about 20% on average. Napa Valley rates, however, have jumped over 30% since 2019, when the average room cost $322. 'That's the highest among any other area,' he said. This is, in part, because Napa Valley is one of the best-recovered markets in the U.S. in terms of pre-pandemic demand, Stathokostopoulos said. He estimates that Napa County's hotel demand has reached 96% of 2019 levels, whereas San Francisco is one of 'the least recovered areas in the U.S.' at roughly 75%. Stathokostopoulos said San Francisco's slow recovery can be traced to 'weak international rebound' from the pandemic, crime and more recently, a reduction in Canadian visitors as a result of the Trump administration's policies on immigration and tariffs. Oakland's recovery rate has been similarly slow, he added. The state of tourism in San Francisco and Oakland, each home to an international airport, is likely 'affecting Napa a little bit,' Stathokostopoulos said, though 62% of Napa Valley visitors in 2023 were day trippers, according to Visit Napa Valley's 2023 Impact Report. While Napa Valley's 2025 hotel occupancy is up 2.3% from last year, Gallagher said San Francisco was 'such a big driver of business to Napa Valley pre-pandemic, when roughly 20% of Napa Valley visitors were coming from outside of the U.S. After plunging to 'basically zero' during the pandemic, Gallagher said that number had jumped to just 10% in 2023. International visitation could trend down in 2025, as Canadian tourists typically make up the region's greatest share of visitors from abroad. 'International travel continues to be relatively non-existent post-COVID,' said Nathan Davis, general manager of the Napa Valley Wine Train, who added that 70% of the popular attraction's riders are day trippers, so the company has seen 'a very nominal, 1.5% decline' in ticketed passengers for 2025. 'This is a sad change that we would like to rectify,' Davis continued, but a quick turnaround is unlikely. The U.S. travel industry is bracing for major headwinds, largely driven by a decline in international visitors in response to President Donald Trump's policies. Canada and several European countries recently issued advisories for travel to the United States; in April, Visit California reduced its $166 billion forecast for 2025 travel spending by $6 billion and lowered its growth projection from 6.2% to 2.3%. Yet even if these impacts trickle down to Napa Valley, Stathokostopoulos doesn't believe they will cause hotel prices to drop. 'Napa Valley is not doing badly. There's not an incentive to decrease rates, and it's hard to decrease rates in a high-cost environment,' he said, noting that costs like minimum wage and insurance have risen. 'In general, (hotels) prefer to lose a little bit of occupancy than lose rate.' For Napa wineries, hotel prices, like tariffs, are yet another challenge that's beyond their control. 'We have a lot of people come to Napa who are staying in Sonoma, who will pay a driver to drive them here. They want to taste in Napa, but don't want to pay the hotel fees,' said winery owner Coors Ficeli. 'I fear that next time, they'll say, 'Sonoma wines are good, too. We might as well just come here.''
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Canadians boycotting U.S. wine is crushing the American industry
Global tariffs and Canada's response to President Trump's wide ranging tariffs is hitting the American wine industry hard. Co-owner of GooseCross Christi Coors Ficeli joins Alex Witt to share her perspective on the struggles wineries are facing.
