Luxury W Hotel San Francisco gets praise for GDC

OK, beyond the LEED award, the W Hotel San Francisco, in fact, the W Hotel chain, has established a level of legendary cool seldom appreciated.

This blogger takes time to gush about The W Hotel because the memory of it as a new, innovative, and deliberately hip place to lay one's head is still fresh. Each W Hotel this blogger has visited has attracted beautiful, well-dressed, intelligent patrons and featured a bar scene that in many cases was part of the social scene for that city: New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, all have prominent roles in their cities.

The W Hotel's combination of dark muted colors, indirect lighting, and smoked glass create a theme popular with tourists, tech industry leaders, entertainers, and even game developers. The annual San Francisco Game Developers Conference brings the biggest heavy-hitters to The W Hotel San Francisco and this blogger was there, first, in 2007; 2009 was not different.

The lobby was teaming with game development executives, graphic artists, and other members of the game industry, meeting and talking about the doings at what's called The GDC. The W Hotel San Francisco played gracious host, and to my understanding no one was unhappy.

This video is from the 2009 GDC and shows how the lobby became a kind of small convention hall itself, and perfect for the presentation of game ideas:



That had to be written because it's not often a business is openly praised for being the perfect place for its patrons, but that's what the W Hotel San Francisco was at the 2010 GDC.