SFGATE is trying something new: “Get a Room”, a sporadic compilation of news about accommodation, trends and weird things. It’s going to be a collection of the good, bad, and ugly in hotels, vacation rentals, camping, glamping, staycationing, and whatever other hideous new travel suitcases that SFGATE’s travel editor Freda Moon deserves comment.
Here in Northern California, some hotels are doing remarkably well, including Big Sur’s Ventana, which just broke a North American record for the highest selling price per room when the 59-room resort was sold to the Hyatt Hotel Group for a whopping $ 148 million. or $ 2.5 million per room, according to the San Francisco Business Times. Ventana Big Sur breaks the record set in April by another local luxury hotel, Montage Healdsburg, which sold for $ 2.04 million per key shortly after it opened in December 2020.
Ventana Big Sur’s rates of over $ 2000 per night may be staggering for most of us, but it’s the new $ 45,000 per month in Sonoma County – and yes, there’s a 30 night minimum – “farm stay” that really baffles the mind. Opening in July in a corner of Northern California known for attracting a generation of compatriots, The Barn at NewTree Ranch speaks of the long, strange journey Sonoma has made in the past few decades using the “new Farmstead concept” has experienced.
In Travel + Leisure, the wonderful travel writer Jill Robinson from the Bay Area cheekily describes the wine country estate as a cornucopia of goop-worthy buzzwords: It is a “biodynamic ranch” and a “sustainable, plant-based community” that offers an “immersive farm experience” and will “anticipate all guests’ needs and pamper them with simplicity.” Nothing screams “simplicity” like an annual salary for a month from what Robinson describes as a program of “yoga, kayaking and paddleboarding on the ranch’s Andreassee.” , an immersive plant-based cooking school, a journey with Tibetan singing bowls and a Wim Hof experience revolving around healing breathing exercises. ”
The future of the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose is taking shape
In March, the swanky Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, one of the anchors of downtown and the convention center, closed abruptly. The hotel filed for bankruptcy and fired guests who were staying there at the time, including the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team. It now appears that Hilton Hotels & Resorts will take over the operation of the bankrupt luxury hotel with 805 rooms, according to documents filed with the bankruptcy court.
The hotel, which Hilton says will be renamed “Signia by Hilton San Jose”, has not yet announced a reopening date. The filings also showed how hard the pandemic hit the Silicon Valley business hotel, which needed $ 45 million from its new operating partner to sustain business, according to the San Jose Mercury News. At the same time, Mercury News reported this week that the hotel’s value fell dramatically in the past two years, from $ 267.6 before the pandemic to $ 220.4 million in March 2021 – a 17.6% decrease since 2019.
While the former Fairmont is back in the news, read this devastating article by archaeologist Shoshi Parks on the history of the downtown property: The Fairmont Hotel was built on the arson ruins of San Jose’s Chinatown.
Bet big on Vegas, baby
Last week marked the first time since 2010 that the famous Las Vegas Strip got a new hotel. The vast 88-acre Resorts World Las Vegas, which officially opened on June 24, is actually made up of three separate Hilton-branded hotels – the Las Vegas Hilton with 1,774 rooms, the Conrad Las Vegas with 1,496 rooms, and the Crockfords Las Vegas 236 rooms and suites – and around 40 different restaurants and bars, a concert hall with 5,000 seats, around 70,000 square meters of retail space, a 100,000 square meter “Boutique Mega Club”, a “Bali-inspired” day club and a five and a half hectare pool complex with Vegas’ largest Pool deck. The 4.3 billion development has been thrilled by Vegas watchers, including Travel + Leisure, which it calls “Wonderland”.
Some are impressed by the exterior of the hotel, which is said to have one of the largest LED building displays in the world. Another, the fact that Paris Hilton performed at the opening of the hotel. But the folks at Eater Las Vegas are more interested in the menu at the 59-story World Tower Resort, home to Mexican chef Ray Garcia, “Las Vegas favorite” Nicole Brisson, and James Beard award winner Marcus Samuelsson and Famous Foods Street Eats – a Singapore-style food hall with street vendor stalls, which Eater describes as perhaps the “most exciting” thing about this entire celebrity scene.
The Queen Mary in Long Beach, California
Julie Tremaine
Long Beach takes control of the Queen Mary to get the historic ship back in order
As SFGATE reported last month, Long Beach’s iconic hotel ship, the Queen Mary, is so dilapidated that the historic attraction is in danger of overturning. The 83-year-old ship requires constant maintenance, but after receiving $ 23 million under a 66-year lease with the city, the ship’s lessee, Urban Commons, went bankrupt in January. Now, the Long Beach Post reports that the city of Long Beach has regained control of the Queen Mary, including day-to-day operations, for the first time in 40 years.
As a sign of the dire state of the Queen Mary, who allegedly needs $ 300 million for critical repairs, an auction for the lease of the ship was canceled because no bidders came forward.
Worse still, the Post reported on June 21 that another attraction, a football field-length Russian submarine – the Cold War-era “Scorpion” – has been lying alongside the Queen Mary for two decades , poses another threat. The submarine is badly rusted, contaminated by raccoons, ingesting water, and “is in danger of sinking or rolling, potentially damaging Long Beach’s historic ocean liner,” the Post reported. The effectively abandoned Scorpio (and its owner a mystery) could cost millions to move.
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