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San Francisco’s Best New Hotels Prove the City Still Knows How to Host

The City by the Bay took its hits during the pandemic, but its latest wave of glamorous boutiques, historic revivals and polished new stays makes a strong case for checking back in.

Historically a beacon of West Coast hospitality, San Francisco was, admittedly, hit very hard by the pandemic. A wave of instability created by remote work, lost jobs and the ever-shifting tech industry led to a lull, but the idea that the Bay Area is no longer a welcoming place is decidedly untrue. Growth may have slowed for a few years, but even during the fall of 2020, the city ushered in a second hotel from the Four Seasons, and additional properties have been slowly but steadily opening ever since. A few landmark hotels housed in historic buildings that took the time to renovate and recalibrate during Covid-19 have also recently returned to the scene.

This past spring, one of the city’s former hospitality icons, The Huntington Hotel, reopened in Nob Hill to plenty of fanfare, and with particular praise for the work of designer Ken Fulk, who dreamt up the glamorous new interiors. With this slightly whimsical and incredibly chic 12-story brick tower ready and waiting for guests, and Auberge busy working on a reimagining of Hearst Tower, there’s no time like the present for a trip to the City by the Bay. California is blessed with good weather year-round, but there’s something special about San Francisco in the summer. Below, find our picks for the best new hotels in the city over the last six years.

The Best New Hotels in San Francisco

1 Hotel San Francisco

Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco at Embarcadero

Timbri Hotel San Francisco

The Jay, Autograph Collection

Luma Hotel San Francisco

1075 California St., San Francisco, CA 94108

The Huntington Hotel reopened with much fanfare for good reason—this is exactly the kind of luxury boutique stay that San Francisco has been missing. Named for Collis Potter Huntington, one of the “big four” railroad tycoons, the Georgian-style brick apartment building opened in 1922 and was converted to a hotel in 1924. From the legendary ‘70s-era restaurant Big Four, where nostalgia reigns supreme and the chicken pot........

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