Hotel Review: InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco, CA

For our six days in San Francisco, we stayed at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco in Nob Hill.

That would normally have been out of our price range, but by using free night certificates for some of the nights, we were able to reduce how much we had to pay overall.

InterContinental is IHG’s most luxurious hotel brand and the hotel had good reviews online, so I was looking forward to our stay, especially because we’d not stayed at an InterContinental before.

We ended up having a fairly good stay overall, but I wasn’t blown away by the experience. The hotel is in a great neighborhood and the valet staff were wonderful, but the property didn’t feel particularly luxurious and there are some expensive fees when staying there.

Here’s a full review of our stay at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco.

The Building

The hotel is named after Mark Hopkins who was one of the founders of the Central Pacific Railroad. He built a mansion on Nob Hill which survived the 1906 earthquake but, like much of the city, it burned down in the days after the earthquake due to a fire that spread throughout San Francisco.

A luxury hotel was subsequently built on the site which has had a number of owners over the years. In 1973, InterContinental Hotels Group took over the running of the hotel and rebranded it as an InterContinental.

Check-In

We arrived in San Francisco at about 3:45pm. Even though parking at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins is expensive (more about that later), we decided to park at the hotel. We knew our room wouldn’t be particularly big, so didn’t want to bring everything in from our car. (In case you’re not familiar with our site, Shae and I are on an 8 year, 50 state road trip and travel with pretty much everything we own in our car.)

The valet came over to see if we needed a hand with our luggage, but we declined his help as I find it’s easier loading up luggage carts myself so that I can Tetris everything on there. He was very friendly though and took our car keys to park the car in their covered parking lot.

The check-in process was surprisingly painless. Due to the way that we’d had to book our stay, we had five different reservations for our six night stay (more about how that worked in the ‘Cost’ section later on).

As a result, I was expecting that we’d have to check in for the first reservation, but then have to check out and back in again each day. However, Aman helpfully set things up so that doing that wasn’t necessary.

Before our stay I bought Ambassador status. That’s a paid-for status IHG sells which gets you benefits at IHG’s InterContinental, Kimpton and Six Senses brands. One of the benefits was a couple of bottles of water each day that came in hotel-branded metallic bottles.

Bedroom

Another benefit of Ambassador status is a one category room upgrade. I’m not 100% sure if we received that, but we did at least get put on a higher floor. The hotel has 19 floors, with the hotel’s Top of the Mark lounge taking up the 19th floor.

We got assigned a room on the 15th floor – room 1532. When entering the room the bathroom was on the right and the bedroom area straight ahead.

The bedroom’s king bed was comfortable and we slept well each night. The blackout curtains worked pretty well, although we did need to use the clips on a clothes hanger to attach two of the curtains together to ensure light didn’t leak in that way.

The room felt quite small, but they managed to fit an armchair in the corner by the bed. On the other side of the bed was the room’s closet which contained a safe, bathrobes, slippers and a luggage rack.

On the other side of the room of the bed there was a desk and chair.

To the left of the desk was a cabinet with the room’s TV on top and a smaller cabinet to the left of that. The smaller cabinet contained a coffee maker inside and ice bucket on top.

The cabinet the TV was on contained a mini fridge and a couple of small dresser drawers. The fridge was empty rather than it being a mini bar which we appreciated as it meant that we had space in there to store our own food and drink. It was a little goofy though because you had to turn a key to open the fridge.

For what’s supposed to be a luxury hotel, our room at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco didn’t feel very luxurious. It didn’t feel cheap and wasn’t dated or worn down. However, if you’d blindfolded me, taken me into the room and asked me to guess which hotel brand we were in, I’d have guessed a Holiday Inn far sooner than an InterContinental.

For as unimpressive as the room itself was considering it’s a luxury hotel, the view from our room was excellent.

Our room faced westwards which meant some good sunset views too.

San Francisco being San Francisco, there’s no guarantee that you’ll always be able to see anything out of your window 😉 We did get lucky though because we had beautiful weather throughout our stay other than this one foggy morning when we were working anyway.

Bathroom

The bathroom had a bathtub with shower. Considering it’s an older property, I was impressed with the water pressure of the shower.

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco provided small bottles of Pharmacopia toiletries, along with a small tub of other miscellaneous items.

Top Of The Mark Lounge

One of the selling points of the InterContinental Mark Hopkins is its top floor lounge called Top of the Mark which has lovely views of the San Francisco skyline. Top of the Mark is open from Tuesday to Sunday from 4:30pm to 11pm. For some reason, it’s closed on Sunday and Monday night.

My Ambassador status was supposed to provide us with a $20 food and beverage credit during our stay. We decided to use that to have a drink at Top of the Mark, so we went up there on our final night to watch the sunset.

The host “welcoming” people wasn’t at all welcoming. There was something strange and snotty about his attitude, making it feel like we weren’t worthy of being up in their esteemed lounge. That was off-putting, but we decided to stay for a drink anyway.

Thankfully our server was much more friendly and we enjoyed our drinks while the sun went down.

Nob Hill Club Restaurant

Top of the Mark is on the hotel’s top floor. On the lobby floor to the right of the front desk is their main restaurant – Nob Hill Club. InterContinentals don’t offer complimentary breakfast, so we got breakfast from Starbucks each morning instead. Here are the lunch, dinner and drinks menus for Nob Hill Club though in case you’re interested.

Amenities

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco has a good-sized fitness room with several pieces of equipment and weights on the basement level. I went for a down there for a jog one day and the treadmill seemed like it had seen better days.

The fitness room has a mini fridge with cool towels to use when working out. There was also a water bottle filling station in the fitness room; if you want ice at the hotel, you can find that opposite the elevators on odd-numbered floors.

The hotel has a business center with three computers and a couple of printers that guests can use. I’m not sure if there was a charge for printing anything off.

InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco Pet Policy

The InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco is a pet-friendly hotel and they don’t charge a pet fee. Both dogs and cats up to 50 lbs are allowed in your room.

If your pup likes dog biscuits, be sure to stop by the dog treat station at the hotel’s entrance.

One of the downsides of staying with your dog downtown in large cities is that it can often be hard to find grassy areas. That wasn’t an issue at the InterContinental on Nob Hill because it’s only one block from Huntington Park.

The park isn’t huge, but there’s plenty of grass for your dog to do their business and walk around a little. Be aware that even though dogs are supposed to remain leashed, you’ll often find at least half a dozen dogs not on a leash in the park.

Service

Service at the hotel was mixed – sometimes it was great, other times not so much.

On the great side were the valets and doormen – all of them were unfailingly friendly, helpful and welcoming. We didn’t get all their names, but Raffy was fantastic. When checking in, Aman was very helpful in combining our reservations so that we didn’t have to check out and in every day.

On the not-quite-so-good side of things was the fact that we were never advised that there was a destination fee for our paid night, nor of the benefits that the fee is supposed to provide. Also, when checking out I asked for a copy of our receipt. The front desk agent wouldn’t print one out despite my request, but advised one would be emailed to me – it never arrived.

There were worse service aspects too. The host at Top of the Mark seemed very strange and rude. It didn’t seem to be only us either; while looking for a restroom up there, I overheard a conversation he was having with another couple who’d just arrived and wanted to have a drink in the lounge. That conversation sounded very awkward on his side of things, so I’ve no idea why he’s in the role he’s in.

Service after our stay was very poor too. I emailed the hotel because we were charged an undisclosed destination fee, plus they didn’t seem to deduct $20 from our drinks at Top of the Mark despite that being an Ambassador benefit, but they never bothered replying. I subsequently tried getting in contact with the hotel via IHG’s website but they ignored that request too.

Wi-Fi

The hotel Wi-Fi was complimentary, although I’m not sure if that’s the case for all guests or because we had status. The speed and connection was good throughout our stay.

Check-In & Check-Out Times

The check-in time at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco is 3pm and check-out is at 12pm.

Location

The hotel is located in Nob Hill, an upper class neighborhood of San Francisco. It’s across the road from the Fairmont and has several Michelin starred restaurants nearby like Acquerello and Benu. It therefore felt like a very safe neighborhood.

A short walk takes you to the Financial District, Chinatown and more, while Fisherman’s Wharf is a 25-30 minute walk away. Something to bear in mind though is that because the hotel is at the top of a hill, if you walk down somewhere then it’s a strenuous walk back up unless you take a cable car, Uber, etc.

Destination Fee

Shortly after we booked our stay, the InterContinental Mark Hopkins introduced a destination fee of $33.77 per night which is a complete scam.

Thankfully that fee doesn’t get charged on award stays, nor – seemingly – when using the Ambassador free weekend night certificate. It’s therefore only regular paid stays that seem to have the fee added on.

For the privilege of getting charged an additional $33.77 per night, you’re supposed to receive the following benefits:

• $10 daily dining credit in the Nob Hill Club restaurant
• Top of the Mark preferred seating
• Local retail and dining savings
• Complimentary electric car charging

We weren’t advised of the destination fee before our stay, nor when checking in or out. The only reason I came across it is because I noticed we were charged more for our first night and that fee was listed on a breakdown when checking our charges on IHG’s website.

At best, the destination fee might be worth $10 due to the daily dining credit. However, even that’s a rip-off if you want to use that benefit because the cheapest thing on their menu is a bowl of soup for $14. Add on tax and tip and that soup becomes $20. That means to get any kind of value from your daily dining credit – that the hotel doesn’t even let you know about – you’d have to spend at least $10 more, meaning the destination fee effectively becomes a $43.77+ fee unless you were planning on eating in the restaurant anyway.

We weren’t given preferred seating at Top of the Mark despite being guests at the hotel, we weren’t given any kind of savings booklet and we don’t have an electric car, so complimentary charging has zero value. I’m therefore glad that the way we booked meant we only had to pay the destination fee for one night of our stay because the hotel provided a grand total of $0 value for that fee.

It’s sad that more and more hotels are introducing these destination fees without providing anything of value that would justify that fee. The one exception I’ve come across is The Westin San Diego Gaslamp Quarter which does provide some surprisingly good perks in return for their destination fee.

Parking

Parking at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco comes at a not-cheap $76.38 per night. That includes tax and also includes in/out privileges.

If you’re booking a paid stay at the hotel and need to park your car there, be sure to check their packages that include parking as those can work out cheaper. There’s also a parking lot across the road that I think was ~$40 per night. Due to the fact that we were leaving some bags in our car, we were concerned about leaving our car in a public parking lot which is why we decided to pay more to park at the hotel as we figured security would be better.

Having said that, we seemed to get lucky. For our first night we booked a paid stay using a rate that included parking. That seemed to charge $30 parking for that night and it appeared that the $30 cost got carried over for some of our subsequent nights too rather than being charged the full $76.38 per night for parking.

Cost

As mentioned earlier in the review, to book our six night stay we had to make five different reservations.

• Night 1 – We booked a paid stay with parking included. This was supposed to cost $272.49, but they added on the $33.77 destination fee too.
• Nights 2 & 3 – Ambassador status comes with a free weekend night certificate which can be redeemed when paying for the first weekend night. Night 2 of our stay therefore cost $243.38, with the 3rd night of our stay being free with that certificate.
• Nights 4-6 – These were paid for using IHG free night certificates received when renewing our IHG credit cards. Although they’re free night certificates, they’re not really free because those credit cards have an annual fee.
  Two of those nights were from my IHG Select card (one had been extended due to COVID) and so we paid two $49 annual fees for those certificates. The third certificate was from my IHG Premier card which has an $89 annual fee. Despite those certificates therefore not being free, they were still great value considering paid rates were $269.38 per night for those three nights. That means paying $187 in annual fees covered three nights that would’ve otherwise cost $808.14.
  n.b. IHG only lets you redeem one free night certificate at a time, so these three nights resulted in three separate reservations.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to come to a conclusion about our stay at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco. It certainly wasn’t a bad stay – it just didn’t feel like a luxury property to me and so was a bit of a letdown.

The hotel is in a good location, some of their staff are great and, despite the building being older, it doesn’t feel at all run down which means they’re doing a great job maintaining it.

However, at other times service was poor, they’ve recently introduced a ridiculous $33.77 per night destination fee that doesn’t come close to providing even half that value and parking is very expensive at more than $75 per night.

I wouldn’t advise against staying there and evidently a lot of people love the hotel given the many positive reviews of it online. That said, if we return to San Francisco in the future I’d likely choose to stay elsewhere.

Truffles Approval Rating

Truffles awards the InterContinental Mark Hopkins four paws out of four – pawfect! It was great that they have no pet fee, our room was quiet for the most part and she liked having Huntington Park only a block away.

Our Rating

Room = 3.9 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 3.8 / 5
Food = N/A (we didn’t eat at the hotel)
Location = 4.4 / 5
Service = 3.3 / 5
Overall Value = 3.6 / 5

Total = 3.8 / 5

Address

InterContinental Mark Hopkins, 999 California St, San Francisco, CA 94108