What's New in San Francisco Area Hotels

Other hoteliers are using the traditionally slow fall season to renovate their properties. Prominent among them is the 1,010-room Parc 55 Hotel, which has freshened all of its guest rooms and just launched an upgrade of its lobby and public spaces. The total tab: $30 million. The Parc 55 will premiere a new fine-dining restaurant, called Crave 55, next March. The hotel, which is staying open during the work, expects to finish the overall upgrade by May.

The Hyatt Regency San Francisco, near the shoreline of San Francisco Bay and quartet of landmark Embarcadero Center highrises, completed a multimillion-dollar makeover this past spring. The 1970s structure, listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world's largest hotel lobby (an eye-popping, 17-story atrium), had begun to grow tired and borderline kitschy.

Hyatt Hotels and Resorts got rid of the kitsch by replacing the hotel's old-school revolving restaurant, Equinox, with two premier-level floors at the top of the building. The Regency Club rooms ($159 to $429) and expansive club lounge give the place an exclusive feel, and the lounge features a kiosk for printing airline boarding passes. Downstairs, Hyatt has put-in a sleek new bar, 13 Views. The bar looks out on the bustling Embarcadero waterfront, which has thrived since the removal of a spectacularly ugly elevated freeway, blossoming with new restaurants and markets at the renovated Ferry Building.

In wine country, an hour's drive north, the big travel news is the opening in late September of the Westin Verasa in a once-forlorn section of downtown Napa city. Although it sports a rustic wood-and-stone exterior that resembles a hunting lodge or a ski chalet and looks oddly out of context in its urban locale the 180-room Starwood Hotels and Resorts (HOT) hotel is sleek and contemporary inside.

The city of Napa was long drive-through territory for visitors pushing on to posh restaurants and verdant Napa Valley wineries. The opening in late 2001 of Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, changed that, triggering a makeover of downtown Napa. Copia closed its doors at least temporarily before Thanksgiving, and the future of the financially strapped nonprofit venture is uncertain, but the changes the museum catalyzed continue.

The Westin is the first major, newly built hotel in downtown Napa in years, but it will be joined in 2011 by Marriott Hotels and Resorts' (MAR) Ritz-Carlton. The four-star Westin is actually a condo hotel; unit owners hand their keys to the hotel when they're not there, and share in the proceeds from room rents.

The Westin has views of downtown Napa and the Napa River, a flood-prone waterway that has been diked, cleaned-up and bordered with a relaxing riverside promenade. Oxbow Public Market, which opened this year with artisan breads, cheeses, locally grown, organic produce and, of course, wine -- is a short walk away. So are a cluster of wine bars and shops. One of the most interesting is Backroom Wines, which its knowledgeable owner Daniel Dawson recently moved to a new location at First and Main streets, where he sells elegant, small-production vintages.

The Westin's prime food offering is La Toque, a French restaurant helmed by Michelin star-winning chef Ken Frank, who relocated the well-regarded eatery from Rutherford. The new La Toque is intimate (65 seats), smartly contemporary in design and expensive; prix fixe dinners range from $49 to $88, before pairings of Franks' food with elite French and Californian wines.

Of course, pampering is available everywhere in wine country -- but for that crushed Zinfandel body polish, one must head to Healdsburg, at the northern end of neighboring Sonoma Valley. This and other wine-based spa indulgences are available at the Hotel Healdsburg through Dec. 31.

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