China accounts for more than half of Asia's new hotel growth, with Beijing seeing a boost in recent years leading up to the 2008 Olympics in August. However, Ford says that the pipeline in Beijing, as well as Shanghai and Hong Kong, is likely to slow down from there.

Demand for hotel space in China has been affected by an overall slowdown in world travel as well as tightened national security that might have discouraged tourism, Ford says. Various reports during the Olympics said hoteliers were offering discounts, an unusual circumstance during such an event, and Olympic organizers gave away tickets to locals in an effort to fill venues.

Middle East hotel construction reached a new high of 556 projects totaling 164,259 rooms through this year's first half, according to Lodging Econometrics. The region has shown moderate incremental growth over the past year, indicating that its pipeline is not yet getting the same economic and credit impacts as other parts of the world.

More than one third of the region's new rooms are being built in Dubai, with 162 projects and 59,950 rooms, outpacing all other major cities including New York, Las Vegas and London, Ford says. Four out of every five hotel projects in the Middle East are being built in either Dubai or Abu Dhabi, he says, meaning that the United Arab Emirates is likely to double its current hotel supply in the next two years.