Two of San Francisco’s largest and most historic hotels are teaming up to create a program for conventions that will provide meeting planners with more flexibility by spreading meeting space and guest rooms across the properties.
Grand Hyatt San Francisco and The Westin St. Francis announced the partnership, Union Square Alliance, to satisfy the growing need to better accommodate mid-sized meetings in the city. Both properties are also very popular among business and leisure travelers.
Grand Hyatt has 660 guest rooms, including 29 suites, and 27,000 sq. ft. of flexible function space. The event space on the 36th floor provides six rooms with 360-degree views of San Francisco. The Westin, which opened in 1904, boasts 1,195 guest rooms and 56,000 sq. ft. of meeting space. The 32nd floor, which contains 7,955 sq. ft. of meeting space, has spectacular wraparound views of the city, framed by 14-foot floor-to-ceiling windows.
The properties are located a block apart on San Francisco’s Union Square, which boasts many attractive entertainment and dining options. The hotels’ location enables groups to also use Union Square’s plaza, which can accommodate up to 1,000 people for a private, tented event. Union Square is also near the city’s mid-Market Street tech hub.
San Francisco has been thriving as a tourism destination. The city attracted 18.01 million tourists in 2014, an increase of 6.5 percent from 2013, according to the San Francisco Travel Association. This resulted in 10.67 billion in spending, a 13.7 percent rise from the previous year.
The city has been attracting many large conventions and meetings, partly due to the facilities and space available at Moscone Center, which provides 992,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space, including 107 meeting rooms, three ballrooms and more than 151,000 sq. ft. of prefunction lobbies.
Recently, San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood has also been emerging as a popular location for meetings and conventions. The neighborhood’s Masonic Center is within walking distance of several large luxury hotels, and together, they can handle groups of up to 100,000.
