January 7, 2026

How Much Does It Pay to Plan Ahead for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference? (A Blog About the Changing Cost of Hotel Rooms in San Francisco).

The week we love to hate is almost upon us again: the 44^th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference will be taking place from January 12 to 15, 2026, in San Francisco.

Next week, everyone who’s anyone in healthcare will be pounding the sidewalks of Union Square – luckily, the current weather outlook is favorable – complaining about their new shoes, whatever bug is making the rounds this year, and the absurdly high cost of the whole circus.

This blog is meant to address that last point directly. We want to help make J.P. Morgan cheaper for you. How exactly do you do that? You book early for next year.

Booking rooms ahead saves you (and your shareholders) money.

Having just survived another J.P. Morgan, the last thing you want to do is start thinking about the next one. However, our data shows that is exactly what you should be doing.

Let me explain our methodology. Over the past year, we have been tracking hotel prices in San Francisco to demonstrate how costs increase the longer bookings are delayed. As expected, the data clearly supports this conclusion.

We are big fans of Marriott hotels, so we selected four appropriate properties across different price points for our sample. We excluded the Westin St. Francis (which is itself a Marriott property) because this is the actual J.P. Morgan conference venue, and as such, is completely booked out.

The hotels we looked at were:

Hotel	Star Rating	Distance From Union Square
JW Marriott, Union Square	Four stars	0.2 miles
San Francisco Marriott, Union Square	Four stars	0.2 miles
Courtyard Marriott, Union Square	Three stars	0.4 miles
Residence Inn, Oakland	Three stars	7.3 miles

Source: New Street Investor Relations, Marriott.com

We started looking at prices in January 2025 and tracked them all the way through December.

Here are the key takeaways from our analysis:

1. Early sell-outs at premium properties. While some properties began taking bookings as early as January 28, 2025, both the JW Marriott Union Square and San Francisco Marriott Union Square were already fully booked by that date. Reservations for either property were not available in the Marriott app, leading us to conclude that both properties were likely booked under contract a year in advance.
2. Limited availability and rapid price escalation at Courtyard Marriott. The Courtyard Marriott Union Square followed a similar pattern. It initially appeared sold out for the first part of the year, before a limited number of rooms went on sale in April at $1,058 for the Monday night timeslot. By August, the price of those few rooms increased to $1,528 per night, after which the property was once again sold out.
3. Consistent availability is farther away, but the price increases as the year progresses. The Residence Inn Oakland was one of the few hotels where we were able to get quotes all year long, not surprising given it’s a full 7.3 miles from Union Square. This is where I’ve spent the last couple of J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conferences, opting to trade convenience for lower costs to clients. Below is the price trajectory for a Studio 1 King room for Monday night, which we believe is broadly representative of hotel costs throughout San Francisco during the conference week.

In brief, a reservation for the Monday night of J.P. Morgan would have cost $190 in January 2025 (booking a year ahead) but ended up costing $522 by December (the month before the conference) – approaching triple the original amount, and an increase of 175%.

It pays to plan ahead.

From the above example, you can see that it pays to make your J.P. Morgan travel plans well in advance. This applies not just to hotel rooms, but also to airfares and meeting spaces.

How do you know the timing of the next J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference before it is officially announced?

It’s simple: the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference is always held the week before Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day. MLK Day, in turn, is always observed in the United States on the third Monday of January each year.