As Room Rates Sink, Sleepless Nights for Hotel Investors | nytimes.com

In San Francisco, prices of hotel rooms have “gone off a cliff,” said Karl Hoagland, chairman of Larkspur Hotels and Restaurants. Softening demand has led some luxury hotels to offer rooms for less than $100 a night. “It’s a great windfall for travelers,” said Mr. Hoagland, whose company owns three hotels in the city’s Union Square neighborhood. But it is anything but a windfall for Mr. Hoagland. His company paid about $100 million for the three hotels, in 2006 and 2007. “It was a pretty big bet on San Francisco,” he said.