One of the Country’s Quietest Hotels Is in SF

Obviously, it’s not found downtown

While it lacks the perpetual hustle-and-bustle of New York City, San Francisco is the second most densely packed city in the country — losing only to, you guessed it, NYC. Postcard panoramas and stills splayed on hotel aggregation sites like Kayak.com paint SF as a metropolis inundated by noisy vehicles and crowded sidewalks, day and night. But those of us who… you know… actually live in this city know that these SEO-friendly topics pertain to just a small slice of the seven-by-seven.

Because just over two miles from Twitter’s downtown headquarters sits the calmer, more serene, less vociferous neighborhoods of the Richmond District, Outer Sunset, and, of course, the Pacific Heights. And it’s the latter SF neighborhood where one of the quietest hotels in the country apparently is addressed.

According to a recent report Morning.co.uk, the UK-based sleep quality company canvases TripAdvisor for thousands of user reviews, gathering and examining them to understand what the hotels in cities across the world were among the quietest. Marriott’s Sabal Palms in Orlando is considered the creme of the corp regarding low-noise domestic stays; nearly 27% of all Tripadvisor reviews said (without being prompted) that the hotel was quiet. A similar percentage — 24.4% — of user reviews also described Hotel Drisco Pacific Heights as rather quiet, as well.

“First, Mornings.co.uk compiled several seed lists: capital cities, US states, holiday destinations, top 20 UK cities people visit, top 20 US states people visit,” wrote Mornings.co.uk in its methodology report. “Using the TripAdvisor search bar, the team then looked for the keyword ‘quiet’ in each location from the seed lists and gathered the data from the hotel’s tab. Later, the team scraped the number of reviews overall and the number of quiet mentions for each hotel then calculated the percentage of ‘quiet’ mentions and grouped the data according to the seed lists.”

While the metrics and examination practices are a bit rudimentary, the data points, which were all collected in February of this year, still hold up.

“Aiming to focus on only hotels, Mornings.co.uk manually cleared our final lists from resorts, lodges, RV parks, hostels, BnBs, etc.,” the report continues. “The team also calculated the average number of quiet mentions for multiple UK and US hotel brands.”

Constructed in 1903, the Edwardian San Francisco hotel features 48 individual rooms, with 16 of those being deemed full-fledged suites. Among its many harped-on nices from past guests include, gastronomic extras (“from a gourmet continental breakfast”) and an evening wine reception. There are also apparently free bikes to borrow to allow.

But those foodie perks and free fossil-fuel-free means of transport don’t come cheap. The most affordable overnight stay at the four-star hotel comes with a pocket-pulling $539 reservation fee during any month this Hot Vaxx Girl Summer.

Sure, it’s great to know that if you want to get bougie and drop a few Benjamins on some hyperlocal, hella quiet R&R, you can. And Hotel Drisco isn’t keeping tabs on their guest’s noise levels by using invasive in-room decibel meters (*cough-cough* like the Castro Hotel currently is doing).

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Or, you know, you can just explore any one of San Francisco’s many urban hikes to find peace and quiet — for literally free.