Related's development team includes Hilton Worldwide, Coastal Construction, Catafulmo Construction and Nichols Brosch Wurst Wolfe & Assoc. architecture.

Hotel companies have taken a hard look at their balance sheets and are now implementing strategies on how to spend their cash. Executives from Starwood, Rezidor, Jumeirah, Marriott and Hilton talked development at the International Hotel Investment Forum in Berlin.

Asia accounts for more than half of all hospitality industry projects being completed by Hirsch Bedner Associates, with three projects alone in Shanghai.

Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics Ltd., told attendees at the International Hotel Investment Forum that the world should expect seven "quite profound" consequences of the economic recession.

At the end of Q4 2009, the total construction pipeline for EMEA had 1,373 projects, a decline of 22 percent since the Q2 2008 peak.

As mortgage lending builds its reputation as a viable investment based on an improving risk/return profile, traditional lenders have re-entered the space in search of high-quality senior lending opportunities.

While hoteliers have breathed a collective sigh of relief that 2009 is over and were prepared to kick off 2010 with optimism, the data isn't quite there to support it. Instead, leaders are focused on the best comeback strategies, and forecasters are all over the map trying to pinpoint how long recovery will take.

According to findings from Jones Lang LaSalle's 2010 Lenders' Production Expectations Survey, 43 percent of respondents expect their loan production to range from $2 billion to $4 billion in 2010.

Do you have that guy in the office who is always telling far-fetched stories? The World islands development in Dubai is that guy in the hotel development industry.

According to Lodging Econometrics, at of the end of Q3 2009 there were a total of 7,787 hotel projects/1,335,168 rooms globally.