Dine About Town June 1-15!

I just went to the kick off party in the Cellar of Macy*s last night featuring tastes from participating restaurants and wines from the Napa Valley. It was a great event with Delicious tastes and it looks like it will be a great summer promotion. This is really one of the best deals going. Here is some information from the www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/taste/dineabouttown/
website. Check it out...there is a complete list of the participating restaurants, menus and a booking system.

It's like you've dined and gone to heaven - twice! Dine About Town is back for June 2009! Save on a specially prepared 3-course lunch for $21.95 or dinner for $34.95. Dates and times of participation vary by restaurant. Menus subject to change. Bon appetít!

Chancellor Hotel serves as a polling place for the special election May 19

What happens if you hold an election and nobody shows up?...Well we found out on May 19th. The Chancellor Hotel was the polling place for the small Union Square voting precinct for the special election and I think we had more check ins than voters. The special election was the state's leaders plan to get California out of a severe budget crisis, but the people wanted nothing to do with it as was demonstrated by the low turn out.

It was a waste give up half our lobby for the day, but it is even scarier to think how much the state wasted on the special election only to be worse off than we were before.

TIPS FOR HAVING A SAFE STAY FROM USATODAY

I consider the Chancellor Hotel a very safe hotel. We are intimate enough that we recognize our guests and people that do not belong often stand out. The hotel has only one way in and one way out which passes right by the front desk. The staff receives a lot of safety awareness training which is the biggest factor for providing a safe environment for our guests. Of course, all of our doors have secondary locks, peep holes, electronic entry locks, secondary window locks and in room safes. Safety is a major focus of ours.

However, I came across this article and I thought I would pass these tips along because it is good to keep in mind with us and anywhere else one goes.

These tips from government officials and hotel security experts may help ensure a crime-free hotel stay:

• Before booking a hotel, make sure that guest-room doors have multiple locks, including a deadbolt.
• Consider using a valet, or park your car in a well-lit area as close as possible to the hotel lobby.
• Before getting out of the car, scan the parking lot for any possible assailants. Lock the car and do not leave any valuables inside.
• In high-rise hotels, request a room on the third floor or above.
• If hotel personnel mention your room number during check-in or another time during your stay, ask for another room.
• Don't enter an elevator if someone inside seems suspicious.
• Don't open the room door to anyone without verification from the front desk, and do not use your name when answering the phone.
• Make sure you know how to use the phone in your room and that you can dial 911.
• Place all valuables in the in-room safe.
• Hang the "do not disturb" sign on the door and leave a light and radio or TV on when leaving.
• At night or any time there's concern about safety, request a hotel staff member to accompany you to your room to inspect it.
  

The Chancellor Hotel on Union Square in San Francisco crosses a TripAdvisor Milestone

The Chancellor Hotel just received its 1,000th guest review on TripAdvisor!

That is the most reviews of ANY hotel in San Francisco. Unfortunately, we just dropped to #6 at the same time, because the new Fairmont (with only 15 reviews) is moving up quickly. However, our ranking and over 1,000 reviews is not bad considering we do not solicit reviews like some of the other hotels do.

The Chancellor Hotel has more reviews than the top 4 hotels combined and more 4 & 5 dot (the highest) scores from guests than they all do together. The second highest reviewed hotel only has 800 reviews.

Our reviews are all real from members of TripAdvisor that use the site to find us and go back and tell how it was. Our high ranking is a result of happy guests that did their research and selected a hotel that they enjoyed. We are a very nice hotel for what we are, but what we are is not for everyone. Most of our bad reviews are from people that did not use the site before booking us, but used it to slam us because they made a bad hotel choice through poor or no research. Back in the olden days, people used travel agents for hotel bookings and the hotel selection was often based on the agent's advice. Today, people do their own travel planning on the Internet, and poor hotel choices can not be blamed on the travel agent. As far as I am concerned, if someone doesn't like their hotel (aside from being dirty or service issues) that is their fault, not the hotel's. In the age of the Internet, it's buyer beware.

So do your research and select the right hotel and post a great review. That way, everyone wins.

Happy travels!

Is the Chancellor Hotel haunted?

I get emails from people all the time asking me questions, inquiring about the hotel, telling me about their stay and all sorts of things. The following email is one of the most unusual I have ever received.

This will be probably a slightly odd email, to say the least, but it's a 100% serious one.

I stayed in room 1501 this past week for the ---- Convention. On Wednesday evening (4/29), probably at around 10:30 or so, I was getting ready for bed after listening to an audio book aloud on my iPhone speaker (like a tape recorder) for a few hours. After turning it off, and turning off my side lamp beside the bed, I was overcome by an extremely cold sensation -- very deep cold, much more than a drafty room would give you -- and became aware of the appearance at the left side of my bed by what I believe was a ghost, probably about 4 or 41/2 feet tall and visible mostly by its head form and shoulders (and maybe the arms.) It looked like a human shape, but I can't say I recall specific features like nose, mouth, etc.

I'll be honest -- I was pretty confused by what I was seeing, thinking it was a shadow on the wall that I was casting, but the nightlight position of the bathroom and wall switches for that was impossible. I waved my arm to make sure it wasn't me, and looked away and back several times to make sure I wasn't having some sort of strange hallucination, like a speck of dust in my eye or something like that. I was extraordinarily confused at first because it never occurred to me that I was seeing a ghost. It was only after I had mentally rejected all other assumptions of what could make this shadow on the wall that I realized that this "shadow" was standing only a couple feet away from me.

I am convinced that what I saw was real, and that it was drawn to me because I had turned off the audio book not long before. It was looking very clearly at me, and seemed to cocking it's head, as if to suggest, "where did the story (i.e. the audio book) go?" Once I realized what I was seeing, and once I broke through my frozen panic, I buried myself under the covers and eventually the cold sensation went away. Neither the sensation or the ghost reappeared for the remainder of my trip. Frankly, I didn't spend much time in my room after that, and never played the audio book again when I was there.

Let me get to my ultimate point... please call if you'd prefer not to reply by email, I understand if you'd rather not do that. But I am extremely serious that I believe I experienced something paranormal in 1501 on Wednesday night, and was pretty freaked out by it (I have honestly held no opinion about these sorts of thing beforehand and what happened hit me like a ton of bricks.) All I ask is if you have any information you could share with me, as to what the "story" is, or just to let me know this is not a singular incident, I'd really, really, really appreciate it. I know that probably no hotel property is all that interested in this sort of publicity, but I would really like to know what you know. I mentioned it to one of your employees on Friday morning, who was completely convinced that what I encountered actually happened, and made it sound like this wasn't an isolated occurrence. So all I ask is for info -- I have no issues with any service or amenity of The Chancellor, and am just trying to figure out what the hell happened. And I promise complete silence if that's what you want in response...

I'm just searching for something to help me make sense of what I saw.

We have had a few people over the years make comments about ghosts and strange occurrences, but this is the most serious, detailed encounter I have ever heard of at the hotel.

You decide.