(Mark Your Calendars for RealShare Hotels 2011, September 15 in New York City).

IRVINE, CA-California hotel sales soared by 354% to more than $2.8 billion in the first half of this year, with the state notching three of the four busiest hotel markets in the country in those first six months, according to a new report by locally based Atlas Hospitality Group. Atlas founder and president Alan Reay tells GlobeSt.com that the trend is likely to continue for the second half of the year because, historically, trading volume is much higher in the second half of the year.

Of the four busiest hotel sales market in the US in the first half of the year, the Atlas report notes, three of the four were in California: San Diego( $1.5 billion), Los Angeles($606 million) and San Francisco( $404 million). New York rounded out the group with the highest sales volume at $1.7 billion.