GlobeSt.com: Are you concerned to be rolling out a new chain of hotels during an economy like this?

Russell: There is always concern. The capital markets are tight and getting debt for new hotel developers is a little more difficult, but that being said, there are still hotel developments going on and projects being developed. It's not going to stop, it's just going to slow down a little bit. This idea is over four years old, and our second hotel has just opened. We've always said we are going to do the first five or six hotels ourselves along with our partner Lehman Brothers. Then our whole growth strategy was to have a franchise program where other people that like the brand develop the hotels and put our brand name and reservation system with the property. Is it ideal? Probably not, but where we like to place these properties are in secondary and tertiary markets, places that are not necessarily gateway cities. These cities do have opportunities and don't have products like this. It's a little more opportunistic for our type of property.

And we're not building $100-million properties. NYLO hotels cost between $22 million and $28 million to build, including land, for 176 rooms. Our sister brand, XP by NYLO, we can build for about $11.5 million. It's the combination of the type of product and the cost of building and the availability of debt for that type of project.