HOLIDAY INN EXPRESS HOTEL - SAN LUIS OBISPO HOTELS

“A lot of this development is responding to some of that natural growth emanating from the center of Washington, D.C.,” Anhut said. What’s more, “there really is no convertible product in the market to accommodate some of our extended-stay brands, like Candlewood Suites.”

Hotel owners, he said, have flocked to InterContinental’s apartment-style chains because of “the amount of project work in and around the Capitol area...and the transient population.”

Few shovels have hit the dirt for any new hotels since the capital markets crashed in fall 2008. With the lack of construction financing, barely 422 hotels across the country opened last year, only 11 in this area, according to Lodging Econometrics, a Portsmouth, N.H. research firm. At the height of the cycle three years ago, 1,345 hotel launched nationwide, 20 locally.

There is still no more than a trickle of properties coming through the pipeline in the next 24 months. Yet the pace of local development has picked up with 99 lodging projects either under construction, slated to break ground or in the early planning stages this year. About 13 hotels are set to open in 2011 and 2012 combined.