"Surpassing 5,000 projects in the pipeline is a milestone event," says Ford, reporting that mark is an "astonishing" 47% above the former high posted in 1999. Room count is up 31% from the peak reached that same year. New announcements in Q3 of 817 projects and 102,300 rooms were 375 projects and 43,160 rooms above that found in the previous quarter. It was also the fifth straight quarter of record development growth.

Touted as the global authority on hotel real estate, LE cites a variety of reasons for the escalation, including a shift several years ago where major operators decided to pass the ownership torch to developers and investors and began concentrating on branding and management services. Marriott has been the most strident in that approach, says Ford, but competitors such as Hilton, InterContinental and Starwood have since followed suit.

According to LE, the strategy has allowed for wider distribution of risk and led to a creation of new lodging brands that have further stoked the development fires. Involved in 665 projects and more than 88,600 rooms, Marriott has the greatest potential for increasing combined franchise and management fee income, says Ford. Of the 51 luxury and upper scale projects in the pipeline that are not owned by the hospitality giant, 24 have selected Marriott for the management team, a 47% success rate.