"San Francisco was named one of the Top 10 Valentine's Day destinations," claimed the e-mail.
"No surprise there," claimed me.
Surprising, however, was the reasoning behind it. First, some background: The e-mail was from a publicist representing Hotwire online travel service. See, Hotwire did a big survey back in July about travel and romance, and it learned things such as "nearly 70 percent of travelers strongly agree that their personal romantic relationships would benefit if they went on more leisure trips together."
Okay, fair enough. So what makes one destination -- San Francisco, let's say -- more romantic than Paris, the Bahamas, or Hawaii? The average price of a hotel room.
That bears repeating: The average price of a hotel room. Hotwire did the theoretical bookings last month for the date range of Feb. 9-14.
San Francisco's average was $94 -- less than Honolulu ($100), Nassau ($129), and Paris ($152). It was more, however, than San Diego ($64), Seattle ($69), and Barcelona ($89).
I can hear the conversation now:
"Hey sweetie, I've always wanted to go to Vancouver. How about we take off some time around Valentine's Day and go up there?""NOT ON YOUR LIFE! Vancouver didn't even make Hotwire's Top 10!"
Ah, romance.
The e-mail says these are "prices that will make any heart flutter."
To that we'll add, "Ay, caramba!"
Which means we should probably book that trip to Barcelona.
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