Call it a meditation on the current state of the travel industry — or a nod to the new normal: We weren’t expecting to see an airline crew checking in to the comparatively casual Courtyard by Marriott this past Saturday. The corporate-friendly hotel, on 2nd Street just south of Market in San Francisco, is a perfectly nice value play – but it’s a far cry from the mod lodgings we always associated with flight attendants and pilots. (That we saw more families than crew at the hotel bar is, now that we think about, probably a good thing.)
But no sooner had we gotten over our surprise than we checked out of the Courtyard and into the not-as-luxurious-as-it-claims Parc 55 hotel, also just off Market on 5th Street. Among the uniforms we recognized there were those of Lufthansa, British Airways, and Cathay Pacific.
Could Downtown San Francisco be the new home of globe-trotting jet setters? Nah, we’re chalking it up to the sub-$200-a-night room rates during the post-Thanksgiving-and-pre-Christmas lull. Even cash-strapped airlines can afford those rates; it only takes 10 checked bags to come up with 200 bucks these days!
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