As president of the Handlery Union Square Hotel, part of Jon Handlery’s job is to scour travel websites to find out what tourists are telling one another about his hotel and San Francisco.

He tries to respond, thanking his customers for their patronage and acknowledging their gripes. But he’s stopped even trying to explain the No. 1 complaint: the city’s miserable street scene that’s made all the more stark against the backdrop of so much wealth and luxury.

Tiffany’s and tents. Neiman Marcus and needles. Macy’s and mental illness.

This month, for example, Handlery noticed a review on TripAdvisor that praised the hotel’s location, its pool, its proximity to the cable cars and the easy walk to the Ferry Building. But it ended with a jolt.

“Seeing homeless men in wheelchairs without shoes in the winter, women with infants on the streets, young men and women on the streets doing drugs, it was painful,” wrote the commenter.

Handlery used to assure his visitors the city was doing all it could to combat rampant homelessness, but he no longer makes those claims.

“I am sorry about the street scene,” Handlery responded to the commenter. “But unfortunately our city has failed to address the issue.”

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San Francisco’s hotel owners and managers are increasingly frustrated that their gorgeous city, with its many museums, fine restaurants and scenic vistas, has an ever-deteriorating, dismaying flip side to the postcard. In a city that spends $305 million a year to combat homelessness, those who serve as San Francisco’s hosts struggle to explain why the problem isn’t getting any better.

“I actually think it’s the worst it’s ever been,” said Handlery, who’s been in the San Francisco hotel business for 38 years.

Kevin Carroll is the executive director of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, which advocates for 110 hotels. Among hotel managers and owners, “everybody’s talking about it,” he said.

“You see things on the streets that are just not humane,” he said. “People come into hotels saying, ‘What is going on out there?’ They’re just shocked. ... People say, ‘I love your city, I love your restaurants, but I’ll never come back.’”

Carroll has taken stacks of printed comments from tourists to City Hall to show politicians how the rest of the world views us. He pulled some of the comments for me. Yes, a man charged with promoting the city’s hotel industry offered up to The Chronicle the worst things visitors are saying about their visits. That’s how desperate the industry is for change.

“Tons of prostitution and fighting every night ... you couldn’t pay me to stay here again,” read one comment. Another said, “We felt unsafe walking across the street, and we live in New York City!” And: “Homeless man tried to stuff drugs in my pockets outside and tried to sell them to me.”

You may ask, “Who cares what some dad from a flyover state or some businessman from another country thinks of us?” But consider this: The tourism industry in San Francisco supports 80,000 jobs, many of them filled by the diverse, working-class people we profess to want to keep here.

Tourism brings an eye-popping $9 billion into the city every year, $725 million of which comes in the form of local taxes going straight to City Hall. That’s the money helping to fund our police officers, parks, libraries — and, yes, homeless services.

Another reason to pay attention to what tourists have to say about San Francisco? They’re fresh eyes on a problem that’s so familiar to us, we just shrug and keep walking.

Kelly Powers, associate director of the Hotel Council, said she recently saw an aggressive homeless man approach a little boy walking with his family in Union Square and grab and shake him from behind. What struck Powers most was “the horror, the look of surprise” on the faces of the tourist family — and the fact that nobody but her tried to help them.

“These people are suffering in the street, and you’re watching it,” Powers said of San Franciscans being totally unfazed by the homeless and mentally ill. “It’s just not right.”

Every day from their perch on the fourth floor above Powell and Geary streets, Carroll and Powers hear horns honking, cable cars clanging and a crazed woman screaming. She’s a regular fixture, shouting every day, and throwing bottles and trash into the street. Carroll said he’s called 311 many times to get help for her, but is told that if she’s not hurting anybody, there’s nothing to be done.

Wes Tyler, general manager of the Chancellor Hotel near Union Square, can relate. Just in the past few weeks, three clearly mentally ill people have come into his hotel to pull the fire alarm, threaten staff and even start a physical altercation with a bellman.

“Any time you call the police for a person that’s causing a problem, they show up and just basically send them on their way,” Tyler said. “There’s no question it’s a turn-off for people.”

Carroll stressed that he thinks the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Police Department really are trying, but that’s cold comfort to a tourist who’s just been screamed at or followed down the block by a stranger.

He also noted hotel owners and managers aren’t just complaining without trying to help. He said that in the last fiscal year, the city’s hotels donated 20 tons of furniture and fixtures to 25 community organizations. Their workers regularly volunteer at Project Homeless Connect.

So is it hurting the bottom line of one of our most important industries? Not in any significant way in this booming economy, but hotel owners and managers say they’re already noticing some worrying signs.

Handlery said he’s lost a lot of regional customers — couples and families from other parts of the Bay Area who used to treat themselves to weekends in the city, but no longer do because of the misery on the streets. The daily revenue in his hotel garage, which is open to the public, has dropped.

Anna Marie Presutti, general manager of Hotel Nikko, said people are already coming to San Francisco to scout locations for conventions in 2019 and 2020. During inspections of her Union Square hotel, they regularly say, “Wow, from our hotel to Moscone Center, my folks are going to have to literally walk through this? ... People are saying, ‘I’d rather go somewhere else.’”

And other cities trying to lure that same business cite San Francisco’s quality-of-life problems to argue against it in their pitches, Carroll said.

“I do believe it’s hurting our business,” he said. “The brand of San Francisco is what’s at risk. Anything that would tarnish that, we should be concerned about. And we are.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf