Santa Clara Hotel room shortage deepens

Santa Clara hotel room shortage deepens as 49ers stadium opening approaches

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Vicki Thompson

The progress of the new San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, as of November 1, 2013. Hotel rooms in the city are increasingly hard to find, even before the stadium opens during the summer of 2014.

Lauren Hepler

Economic Development Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal

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Hotel rooms in Silicon Valley have been increasingly hard to come by in recent months, thanks to an improving regional economy and an uptick in area business conferences.
In October, hotels in the City of Santa Clara hit a new yearly high with occupancy rates averaging 87 percent — a 4 percent year-over-year increase. The city's average daily hotel rates rose to $177, up from $158 in October 2012.
With the opening of the San Francisco 49ers' new $1.3 billion Levi's Stadium slated for next summer, developers including former team legend Joe Montana are already circling the area for new hotel projects. Despite the growing pipeline of lodging proposals, local tourism officials say the market could use even more hotel rooms.
"Do you have enough money to build a hotel for us?" joked Santa Clara Chamber of Commerce and Convention-Visitors Bureau CEO Steve Van Dorn. "I’ve never seen this kind of occupancy."
Van Dorn said October is a perennially strong month for conventions in the city. The Oct. 15-20 Pacific International Quilt Festival alone drew more than 10,000 people. That event at the convention center — just a few hundred yards from the football stadium site — also drew traffic over the weekend, when Silicon Valley business travel tends to die down.
Both existing and prospective hoteliers are looking to capitalize on increasing hotel occupancy and nightly rates, especially since the new stadium will host the Super Bowl in 2016.
Just next door to the stadium sits the Hilton Santa Clara, where General Manager Erich Smith is mulling a 420-room expansion that would include a rooftop bar overlooking Levi's Stadium. That plan has not yet moved forward due to uncertainty created by the dissolution of the city's former redevelopment agency, which owns much of the land in the stadium area. Still, Smith remains "bullish."

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Lauren Hepler covers economic development