Photo: Nicole Boliaux, The Chronicle
Written by: JK Dineen
Read article: Click here
Developer David O’Keefe expected a decent crowd last month when he held a soft opening reception for his new Hotel Via, across from AT&T Park. He just didn’t anticipate people would start wandering in and booking rooms before the hotel’s online reservation system had even gone live.
“The response has been overwhelming,” he said. “We had 60 walk-ins that Saturday night.”
The 159-room Hotel Via, at 138 King St. in Mission Bay, is the first new full-service hotel to open in San Francisco since February 2008, when the 550-room Intercontinental opened next door to Moscone West. It’s the first boutique hotel to premiere since Hotel Vitale across from the Ferry Building was completed in 2005.
But it’s not going to be the last new hotel to open in 2017, or even this summer. After a long drought, San Francisco is in the midst of a mini-wave of five hotel openings.