What qualifies a hotel as one of the best in San Francisco? Well, we know that for some the best hotel is the most luxurious, while for others it's the one that offers, say, the most for kids, or the most bang for the buck. So this list breaks things down by category -- in other words, it includes the top hotel from each of our other San Francisco "best" lists: best luxury hotels, best value hotels, best kid-friendly hotels, and so on. We're able to create these rankings because a team of Oyster reporters spent several weeks exploring 59 of the city's top hotels. We slept in the beds, ate in the restaurants, tested the service, and scoped out the neighborhoods, all with an eye toward selecting the most distinguished properties. Those that made this list are truly the best of the best.