Paul Sacco, senior vice president with Boston-based Pyramid Hotel Group, piggy-backed on that sentiment: "A lot of that has to come from ADR growth because in many markets, occupancy is back up pretty high." This uptick, along with continued business travel and group bookings, will be important, he said.

On the other hand, Leland Pillsbury, co-chairman and CEO of Thayer Lodging Group in Annapolis, MD, believes that demand for the next three years beginning in 2013 will grow three times as much as GDP and that room rates will triple CPI. On top of that, very little new supply should be added to the market.

But no matter how long it takes, the group agreed that growth is coming. Troy Furbay, executive vice president of acquisitions and development with New York City-based Loews Hotels, believes the fundamentals support this. It's a view echoed by Mark Laport, president and CEO of Concord Hospitality Enterprises Co. in Raleigh, NC. "There's a surprising amount of geographic focus concerning new development in a few top markets, with very little development occurring elsewhere," he said. He feels that the East and West coasts are showing more robust growth than Middle America.

Wherever growth is focused, it will not be by market alone, and panelists think greater creativity is called for on the part of those in the hotel industry. "A hotel needs to stand on its own merit and not rely, for example, on branded residential along with the hotel," Sacco said. "The 'build-it-and-they-will-come' scenario no longer exists, and properties need to be developed in areas where there's already a strong foundation." He cited corporate presence and built-in demand to provide anchors, in a sense, for future hotel projects.

Newer hotels especially must provide something different for guests. New kinds of travelers are coming to the states, due in part to the recent Eurozone crisis and increased international travel from China. On the construction front, Sacco said that more upscale select-service hotels would pop up in the next couple of years in both top-tier and secondary markets. He also agreed with Chase that there would be continued opportunity to acquire distressed assets in this segment.

In terms of new hotels becoming more creative, the condominium-hotel phenomenon was a precursor of things to come, according to Pillsbury. "Coming out of the last downturn, going into the recovery, developers conceived this new kind of product," he said. "Even more significantly was the mixed-use residential-hotel project and that really drove the upper-upscale luxury segments and their distribution."

Looking ahead, he expects that "there will be some new types of development projects," though he did not name any specific possibilities. Sacco anticipated that old buildings would be adapted for hotel use, such as Boston's Liberty Hotel, formerly a jail. Pillsbury predicted that as boomers age, hotels will hook up with senior living-style facilities.

But the uniqueness of an asset can't trump local market factors, and locale as much as any other consideration determines a project's success. Pillsbury said that Miami has really heated up recently, and Chase cited up-and-coming markets his firm is betting on. "We are doing a project in Portland, ME, in which we are converting an historic hotel into a Westin." Additionally, New Castle is building on Jekyll Island in Georgia near a new convention center and is entering into Canadian projects as well.

You can add cities like Cincinnati or Indianapolis to the list of developing areas. But even top-tier markets can be overlooked. On the office side, Furbay observed, no market is hotter right now than Lower Manhattan. "It's incredible how much office is getting built there right now," he observed, adding however that the Manhattan submarket is virtually overlooked in terms of lodging.

Picking strategic markets and offbeat cities for new hotels isn't random; Chase said it's a smart move. "The deals are harder to do," he admitted. "We're all going to have to dig a little bit harder, but I think the projects are going to be better. They'll be stronger deals because we aren't taking things for granted. We're looking at the right projects being structured properly today."

There is, however, always the fear of oversaturation—Manhattan being one (Lower Manhattan aside). And here again, the topic of brand identification and uniqueness of an asset comes into play. Sacco noted that there is room for the major hotel companies— Marriott, Starwood and Hilton, to name but three—to have multiple brands within a market.

"The key," he said, "is to prove that the brands are differentiated from one another." For instance, "if you differentiate by extended-stay versus select-service, or transient versus full-service, there's potentially room" in markets even though they verge on oversaturation.

Chase added New Castle's experience to the conversation: "We're building a Residence Inn and Courtyard combo in Syracuse. That's an interesting application for conversions now as well as new builds." Larger hotels can thus be segmented to offer two different brands appealing to two different customers and appropriately meet the needs for secondary markets, he noted.

However planning takes shape, it can't get far without capital. With the industry still reeling from the recession, professionals have had to change the way they approach financing. Pillsbury explained that the present-day availability of data and statistics will help developers better plan their moves and make a stronger case for feasibility and, therefore, debt. He also noted that today, financing is being done on balance sheet and underwriting standards have become "a lot more rigorous."

Pillsbury added that "patient money" will be key for growth. "One of the differences for developers is you've got to have a much longer horizon," he explained.

"We're looking at it a bit differently," said Furbay. "If you have a positive view of where the market's going, which many of us probably do, now's a good time to build, if you can. But there's virtually no construction financing available. We're using our balance sheet to help developers get financed."

For Laport, "Debt is wonderfully priced if you have the intestinal fortitude to put a spade in the ground and you have good banking relationships. You can borrow money at historic lows. It's a marvelous time to create value. We're all here as value creators and fundamentally, we all do the same thing. We have to underwrite to return levels that our co-investors expect."

On the acquisition side, think turnaround. Underperforming, undercapitalized and undermanaged assets can be a great source of revenue, Chase believes. He described future opportunities as "very exciting," adding "the turnarounds are good returns for investors, and they're lots of fun to do. We're not finding 100 of those deals, but we are finding two or three per quarter.

"In the full-service, upper-upscale space," he said, "there continues to be opportunity for some kind of under-branded, underserviced assets to be acquired. There will also be an opportunity for a new brand and perhaps a level-up in segment within full-service."

Within the confines of the US, lodging as a whole is gaining momentum. Broaden the scope internationally and the scenario becomes a bit more mottled. On one hand, new customers are increasingly likely to be international travelers. Global brands will thus become more important. Growth in China and the European crisis will certainly impact US investment and development.

"There's huge opportunity for all of us as China ramps up its international travel," stated Laport. "There are potentially over 100 million Asians who can travel to our country, which has huge implications for the international brands that have been successfully distributed in China and would therefore likely benefit by inbound travelers who have brand awareness."

While good news is coming from the East, the situation in Europe may yet rock the boat. Pillsbury said that the two problems on the Continent are liquidity and solvency. The immediate and pressing issue is the former, he said, but it can be more easily solved than the latter. "There are only two ways to deal with solvency: one is to debase your currency," he explained. "The other is to grow your way out of it. The policies in Europe are anti-growth."

He admitted that he doesn't think that anyone—European or US-based—has a way to solve the solvency problem abroad. And it can only prove to be more challenging as European companies look to the US for financing and thus create more competition at home for the same funds.

"There's an enormous storm cloud hanging over the Atlantic," he said. "We seriously underestimate the magnitude of the effect it's going to have on our economy."

Furbay agreed: "In the near term, the devaluation of the euro is making the US more expensive. That's dangerous." He noted that, because things are cheaper in Europe, more US companies are looking overseas for better value, a situation he says doesn't bode well for near-term prospects for lodging.

The situation overseas might present a few larger-than-average potholes as the industry continues trucking on the long and winding road to recovery. Developers, operators and owners alike may be able to see only about three years or so down the road, but barring a global economic meltdown or other surprise, that road is relatively straight, the path clear.