SAN JOSE — Empty hotel rooms and overhyped projections could leave San Jose on the hook for several hundred thousand dollars and the bad fortune of being the only Bay Area city to lose money on the Super Bowl.

Instead of selling out every single room during Super Bowl week, as the city projected, San Jose hotels actually welcomed fewer guests than the same week last year, preliminary figures released Monday show.

With three out of every 10 rooms vacant, the city won’t reap the nearly $1.9 million in additional hotel taxes it forecast Super Bowl week would deliver. Instead, a report submitted by Smith Travel Research shows the city will likely receive about $600,000 in extra hotel taxes, said Victor Matheson, an economist at College of the Holy Cross, who studies the economics of Super Bowls.

That’s not enough to offset the $1.25 million in costs mostly for police services during Super Bowl week.

City officials cautioned that the current data only account for about 85 percent of hotel rooms and doesn’t include revenue from Airbnb, sales taxes or airport landing fees — all of which still need to be computed. Still, Mayor Sam Liccardo was realistic about the hotel tax revenues.

“We won’t meet that projection,” he said. “But, I expect that when … we aggregate all of these, that the city will have done quite well during Super Bowl week.”

Thanks to dramatically higher room rates, San Jose hotels raked in record sales during Super Bowl weekend, but that was not enough to offset poor occupancy during the entire week leading up to the game.

Matheson said San Jose officials should have known better. Cities such as San Jose that primarily attract weekday business travelers often see occupancy rates decline in the first half of Super Bowl week as those travelers avoid higher rates associated with the big game.

“San Jose’s projection was very optimistic,” he said. “To reach it, you’d have to fill all the hotel rooms, not lose any non-Super Bowl customers and see huge rate increases.”

San Jose’s hotel tax revenue forecast “fell short,” city officials said, because it was based in part on figures from past Super Bowls hosted by Indianapolis and New Orleans, neither of which have to compete against a tourist behemoth like San Francisco for Super Bowl guests.

In retrospect, those cities, which dominate their regional hotel markets, should not have been included in the forecast model, said Laura Chmielewski, vice president of marketing and communications for Team San Jose.

San Jose’s hotel tax woes were contrasted with sunny news last week out of San Francisco, where politicians had griped for weeks about losing money on the big game.

The San Francisco Travel Association, also using preliminary data collected by Smith Travel Research, reported last week that hotel tax collections increased more than $5.3 million during the last four days of Super Bowl week. That would be enough to cover the city’s estimated cost for hosting most of the week’s activities. Occupancy in San Francisco peaked at nearly 91 percent.

“It was a huge success,” San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Vice President Jim Lazarus said.

In San Jose, the preliminary report found that while room prices soared 64 percent to $273 during Super Bowl week, hotel occupancy rates actually dropped 9 percent compared to the same week last year.

San Jose’s hotels did far better during the weekend of the big game. From Friday through Sunday, occupancy increased 16 percent, and room prices soared from an average of $130 to $315.

Santa Clara, home to Levi’s Stadium, did not respond to queries about hotel tax revenue. The city was guaranteed to at least break even on the game because the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee had agreed to cover all of its costs.

While the hotel figures are preliminary, Matheson said they are the largest revenue source for host cities and therefore provide a good indication as to whether those cities can truly expect to recoup their costs. Combining San Francisco’s and San Jose’s figures, he said it appears as if the region as a whole has a good chance of breaking even.

“Is this going to be a $500 million windfall for the Bay Area? Certainly not,” he said. “Is it enough to cover your incremental costs? It looks like they’re going to come close.”

Contact Matthew Artz at 510-208-6435. Follow him at Twitter.com/Matthew_Artz.