HOUSTON–With the recent announcement of the Aloft Houston Downtown development, Houston now has at least 2,350 hotel rooms coming entering the pipeline by the time the city hosts the Superbowl in 2017.

While industry experts admit there is a severe shortage of hotel space in Houston, some worry the eight hotel projects in the works will bring too many rooms to the market place.  

“In Houston there is a little over excitement in the hotel space,” Mark Sallette, senior vice president of debt and structured finance, hotels at CBRE, tells GlobeSt.com. “There is probably going to be a flood of rooms that are needed for a short duration, but for how long is that going to last?”

The most buzzed about project is the 1,000-room Marriott Marquis. This $335 million hotel, which will break ground later this month, will be tied to the George R. Brown Convention Center, doubling the number of rooms available to convention attendees. In addition the project will include 100,000 square feet of meeting space and 20,000 square feet of ground floor retail.  

The Marriott Marquis is expected to help put Houston on the map for convention planners. Sallette, says often conventions will choose San Antonio or Austin over Houston, but the city is trying to change that perception.

Other new development projects include the 261-key Hyatt Place, a 225-room Hotel Alessandra, a 168-room Hampton Inn and a 132-key Homewood Suites.

Some properties are being completely redeveloped and rebranded, such as the 325-key JW Marriott, the 166-room SpringHill Suites, and the 215-key Holiday Inn.

With the Superbowl looming three years away, developers are pushing projects along at a fast clip.

“The Superbowl really focuses everybody on making sure that these projects are completed. It keeps everybody on track,” Kevin Roberts, president of Southwest for Transwestern, tells GlobeSt.com.