This past weekend I took advantage of one of the free weekend nights I earned last month for a complimentary $500 stay at the St. Regis San Francisco. I struggled with this review and I have decided to do it in two parts.
Here is a subjective hotel review from my wife’s perspective as she described her St. Regis San Francisco experience to me.
“St. Regis San Francisco has an ideal bed. The pillows were the best pillows I’ve ever had in a hotel room. The sheets felt great. I could sleep all day. The room view felt like we were so much higher than the 12th floor. The room was bright for San Francisco and the view from the bed through the windows was puffy clouds floating across the sky.”
I was impressed that she kept commenting about how fine the sheets were to sleep in for the minutes she would wake up and talk. The St. Regis San Francisco room description on the website specifically mentions Pratesi linens, but I hadn’t mentioned that detail to Kelley.
Kelley slept in the St. Regis bed in Pratesi sheets for 20 hours of our 24 hour stay. She is in the third week of her six week radiation cancer treatment. Kelley thought the hotel was the quietest of any hotel we have stayed in the past month. She enjoyed the hotel room thoroughly.
St. Regis San Francisco Hotel Room 1202 Detail:
The room was incredibly bright with natural light when we walked in. The window viewing space is about 170 square feet along two exterior walls, one wall facing the W Hotel and the other wall with windows looking across Third Street to Yerba Buena Gardens and Moscone Convention Center with a full view of the enormous San Francisco Marriott Hotel.
The two unobstructed windows facing the adjacent SF MOMA and the W Hotel about 150 yards away are 6 feet high and 4.5 feet wide. The chaise lounge was nice for one, but I ended up sitting in the desk chair most of the time for a more comfortable seat. The window ledge on one wall is a terrific feature for sitting on the edge of a skyscraper and looking across to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the W San Francisco Hotel.
One hotel review I read commented on the openness of the room as a bit too open for privacy.
This room view from the desk to the toilet may clarify the hotel reviewer’s feeling for lack of privacy.
There are shutter style doors at the bathtub to close off the view from the bedroom and W Hotel view when the shades are open.
Another sliding door adjacent to the hall table can block the view from room 1203 next door and the hall. There is also a separate sliding door to close off just the toilet and shower.
Room Size
The hotel website describes most St. Regis hotel rooms as 450 to 500 square feet. Executive Premier Corner rooms are described as 550 square feet.
The actual room space including the 3 feet wide inside window ledge measured about 515 to 525 square feet by my calculations and around 30% of that space is entry hall space and closets. The room wall facing Third Street zigzags and the bed is placed in the widest part of the room where it is 17 feet across. The room width changes along the 34 foot wall as it zags inward from the column to the front door in three locations. The front door entry has the narrowest width at 11 feet.
The ceiling at 9 feet high in the main bedroom section adds to sense of space with the higher than average room ceiling.
All three windows in the photo below are actually the same size. The view out the one corner window is mostly obstructed by the large building column that juts into the room. You can still stand by the window and actually see out the full size window.
The third window nearest the main room door is larger, but has the feature of looking directly on the neighboring room’s window if the sheers are open.
The sheers need to remain shut for privacy from the bed or bath view.
My two primary room design complaints are both related to the TV.
1) There is a large 42-inch LG TV, but there are no HD channel signals on the cable.
2) The 42-inch large screen TV blocks a huge portion of the best window view in the room.
Two large windows face west to Yerba Buena Garden and the hills of San Francisco that separate downtown from Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean. When lying in bed the hotel guest looks at a sliver of one window mostly blocked by the building column. The second window with the primary vista of the room is blocked by the 42-inch TV screen. A third, even larger floor-to-ceiling window looks into the windows of the adjacent room 1203. The room windows provide ample light but highly limited functional viewing space for their size.
The window view with the TV looked like this:
That is why Kelley just saw clouds from bed.
Looking out an unobstructed window behind the TV shows the Marriott Hotel on right and InterContinental Hotel in the left background.
And at night I had to straddle the TV to photograph this:
I have never spent so much time in a room leaning against, wrapping around, and straddling a TV to get pictures and the preferred view.
TV Solution: Wynn Las Vegas has TVs that electronically descend into the cabinet and this would be the perfect furniture solution for this particular room design. (August 31 update. I do not remember where I saw the descending TV cabinet. Apparently, not the Wynn Las Vegas. Wynn Encore has a swivel TV to allow viewing from either the bed or sitting room.)
Room Views
This room had one of the most open views looking across San Francisco of any hotel we have stayed. Watching clouds and seagulls fly by the windows in the morning was entertaining. Kelley commented how we seemed so much higher than 12 floors with the open space view. The southwest corner windows view across Moscone Center to the hills. The open vista across San Francisco looking west is obscured by the 42 inch TV.
Electronic Window Shades
The electronic window shades are one of the coolest room features. A touch of the button opens or closes four different window shades. The shade behind the room corner column has a small width room shade requiring manual adjustment.
The basis for another complaint I saw in other hotel reviews is the inability to individually control the window Roman shades. They work uniformly to open or close simultaneously. This limits the room lighting options with the window shades.
All the natural light streaming in during daylight hours would make the option to individually control window shades a highly desirable feature for blocking light on one wall while keeping shades open on the adjacent wall. The uniform motion remote-controlled electronic shades preclude this option.
Bathroom:
Small bathroom TV is a feature when using the bath mirror.
Sink, tub, shower, and toilet all looked good. The rain shower head in the separate shower stall was great. Oddly enough there was no hook for hanging a towel near the shower stall. The one hook in the bathroom is on the far side of the tub 5 feet from the shower door.
Bath products are REMÈDE products which is also the spa brand on the 6th floor adjacent to the hotel pool.
Entry Hall
A bench, stool, or chair in the entry hall for changing clothes would be a desirable feature. I repeatedly found myself going into the entry hall to change so I wouldn’t need to close the Roman shades over all the windows to block the view from the two windows facing the W Hotel.
The spacious room windows allow visibility throughout the bedroom and bathroom from the W Hotel. The entry hall and toilet/shower are the two areas not visible from W Hotel when Roman blinds are up and bath shutters are open.
The local San Francisco paper and the Wall Street Journal newspapers were in a cloth bag on the doorknob in the morning.
A nice feature of the room is the separation of the room door from the bed and bath area. Kelley pointed out to me she was able to remain in bed while hotel staff came to the room door for services and even did a mini-bar check in the entry hall without ever coming into sight of the bedroom or bathroom.
There is no coffee maker in the room. Fortunately I located the complimentary coffee service at the 4th floor Vitrine Restaurant as I wandered around in the morning.
Lobby Bar
http://www.iceportal.com/brochures/partners/2635/Brochure.aspx?mediaid=297550
The lobby was hopping with activity on a Friday evening. Women and men dressed finely.
The lobby was empty for most of the day Saturday, rarely more than a few people.
I had a wonderful beer at the Ame bar, St. Peters IPA from the UK, $10 before tax and tip.
Pool and Fitness
The indoor pool is located on the 6th floor. The pool is open 24 hours which is a hotel privilege not commonly found.
The yoga room is a nice meditative environment.
The fitness room on the 5th floor is highly functional with two dozen or so machines in two rooms.
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