NEW YORK CITY-As REITs ramp up and group rates continue to climb, it’s been one hot summer for the hotel market. With a near $5 billion in transaction volume during the first five months of 2011 alone, big brands and big names are beginning to drive business in top-tier markets and secondary and tertiary regions once again.

But as the economy remains in flux and unemployment remains high, concerns over the stability of the industry is still on everybody’s minds post-recession. “These secondary markets didn’t get hit as hard as these urban markets had,” said David Pepper, senior vice president of global development for Choice Hotels International, during GlobeSt.com’s “New Era for Hotel Opportunities” webinar on July 27, sponsored by Choice. “The leisure traveler has stayed consistent. But now there are some world politics going on. If gas prices continue to go back up, that’s where the leisure traveler is really going to be affected.”

And while others push to incentivize development, Jonathan Bortz, president, CEO and chairman of Pebblebrook Hotel Trust, predicts that the hotel industry will see healthy travel growth as long as corporate profits continue at high levels--and continue to grow. “We had a recession that was decimated by a decline in business travel primarily and that hits the major cities the most,” Bortz said. “I think we’re seeing a reverse of that on the positive side. I think the rebound has happened much faster and it’s impacted the major cities first because that was primarily the lost business travel. Really, the other markets depend more, on overall demand growth in the long-term.”