San Francisco’s beleaguered tourism industry got good news when hotels hit their highest occupancy rate — 76% — since before the pandemic when the Game Developers Conference, the NCAA basketball tournament and a top sailing race were in town last month.
But that tells only part of the story. While more tourists are enjoying their San Francisco vacations, many of the people who would be serving them in the city’s hotels remain out of work.
Nearly half of the 9,000 people who work in San Francisco’s hotels — more than 60% of them immigrants— haven’t been asked to return to their jobs full time.
That would cut into the hotel’s profit margins, say union leaders who represent the workers. The hotels respond that they’re hiring based on what they need, and travel industry leaders say San Francisco is only starting to recover.
Before the pandemic, the city’s hotel occupancy rate was second only to New York’s. Now, it has…