Craft House Client, The Battery, Featured in Forbes
The Battery room interior
The Coolest Place to Stay in SFO is this Private Club
Whenever I'm traveling to a new city, I like to ask around for suggestions in order to find the best hotel. By "best" I don’t necessarily mean most expensive but instead, the most expressive.
By Nicole Trivilas for Forbes
It’s my belief that the world’s very best hotels should, of course, be luxuriously but also reflect the destination. This is why The Battery—a much-whispered-about private members club with a handful of guest rooms—is the best place to stay in San Francisco. It’s youthfully spirited but low key and discreet; exclusive without being elitist; and also well thought-out and innovative in a way that is truly unique to San Francisco at this specific point in time. Here’s how it works:
First of all, The Battery is an ultra-selective social club with around 5,000 members—plenty with recognizable names. Unfortunately, there will be no naming names here. Their strict no-social-media policy means that no one gets outted: No members or guests are allowed to take photos, post photos or tag photos.
There’s a long waitlist to join this buzzy, secretive club, but there is one way around it: Book a night at one of The Battery’s 14 guestrooms. With your reservation, you're granted honorary club membership for the duration of your stay.
“The trend in the industry is that people are seeking more authentic travel experiences, and I think that The Battery [as a club/hotel] hybrid is really representative of that,” says General Manager Megan Gray Stromberg. “Our hotel guests get to feel that sense of community that our members get to feel [and] we are first and foremost a social club.”
This sense of community is fostered in a number of ways. Most impressively, there are parameters in place to ensure The Battery stays social and doesn’t turn into just another co-working space, as there are plenty already in San Francisco. In the club’s public spaces, rules state that phone calls must be taken outside (or in one of The Battery’s cool Wes Anderson-esque phonebooths) and all laptops and digital devices must be shut down and put away before 6 p.m. (Technology is, however, always allowed in The Library, one of the club’s many stylishly outfitted nooks and crannies.)