There are close to 100 new hotels slated to open in major U.S. cities this year, including several in Miami, according to Smith Travel Research. The additions to the market are unlikely to help the existing nightly glut of unoccupied hotel rooms in many regions, but their seemingly poor timing may be mere coincidence, said Mark Lomanno, Smith Travel Research’s president.
A new hotel can take two to four years to plan and one to four years to construct, so most developers for this year’s hotels were taking their chances several years ago, when the economic outlook was much rosier, Lomanno said. Developers’ misfortune will probably benefit travelers by driving prices down and providing more choices, but only for a few years, travel experts said. Lomanno explained that while this year will be a big one for new hotels, there are few properties scheduled to come online between 2011 and 2013.
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