With nearly 2,000 homes and commercial buildings already destroyed in southern California due to raging wildfires, the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) is urging the hospitality community to help rebuild the lives of victims by donating gently-used furniture and funds to non-profit partner the National Furniture Bank Association (NFBA).

According to ModernAgent the NFBA accepts and provides free pick-up service for used furniture, which is distributed to those in need through furniture banks across the country, including several in California working to restore the lives and homes of wildfire victims.

The AH&LA and NFBA partnership connects hotels with local furniture banks as a solution to ease the waste management burden of furniture removal in an eco-friendly way while also benefiting the local community. According to a 2005 AH&LA study, the hospitality industry donates approximately $815 million annually in charitable donations and actions, with $62 million attributed to donations of goods, including linens and furniture.

Annually, NFBA works with retailers, manufacturers and hotels to collect approximately one million pieces of furniture, distributed to 100,000 needy families who have fallen victim to natural disasters, domestic violence, or are living just above the poverty line. For more information on AH&LA and NFBA, visit www.ahla.com or www.help1up.org. For AH&LA members interested in donating to NFBA, please email Jeff Hay at jhay@help1up.org.

Reuters reports that France's handful of luxury hotel "palaces" face an uncertain future after the government announced plans to align itself with international practice and create a "five star" category of top notch lodgings.

France's official hotel scale currently stops at "four star luxury", but in Paris half a dozen hotels offering rooms from upwards of 600 Euros a night claim the right to call themselves "palaces" ─ a term that even the hotels themselves can't agree on who qualifies to use.

"We hope to move as quickly as possible, even at the end of 2008 if we can reach an agreement," said Guenola du Couedic, a spokeswoman for tourism minister Luc Chatel, who announced the reform plans in a statement late on Monday.

Paul Roll, managing director of the Paris tourism office, said a five star category would make things simpler for international customers, and it was still an open question whether "palace" would continue to exist as a category apart.

The conversion of many New York City hotels into swanky condominiums has taken a bite out of the Big Apple's lodging supply. According to CNN, the city's room shortage comes at a time when demand is surging from overseas travelers capitalizing on a weak U.S. dollar. That means higher rates and more money for New York's hotel industry.

So far, some 23 hotels have closed in New York since 2000, according to data supplied by Smith Travel Research. The conversion of many of these hotels into luxury condominiums during the housing boom has exacerbated the hotel shortage.

Currently, the annual occupancy rate in Manhattan is 83%. "That's huge for a market this big. It's not matched by any large city in the U.S.," said McConnell. He said that between 2004 and 2006, up to 3,500 rooms were taken out of Manhattan because of the condo-conversion craze.

The most notable conversion is Manhattan's iconic Plaza Hotel, which has gutted more than 600 rooms for condominiums while keeping 130 rooms for temporary lodging. Other hotels that opted for similar transformations include the Mayflower Hotel, the Stanhope Park New York and the Mark. Such hotels were seen as ideal candidates for condominiums given their prime location. However, condo-conversion fever is starting to cool given there are fewer hotels left and as the national mortgage crisis tempers demand.

As the most expensive market in the U.S., New York has been posting double- digit percentage growth in RevPar, or revenue per available room, for the past several years. Hotel companies are looking for the same pace of growth next year, said Smedes Rose, a lodging analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc.

He said this should benefit publicly traded hotel operators with significant exposure to the New York market, including Host Hotels & Resorts Inc. (HST) and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (HOT). Indeed, growing demand has fueled a 46% increase in average hotel rates from 2002 thru mid-August 2007, to $241.99, according to Smith Travel.

The Dallas-based pioneer of discount airlines, which carries more than one in four passengers who fly through Lambert Field, is in the midst of a transition, trying to keep its edge in a hotly competitive industry without losing the identity that's won it millions of fiercely loyal customers.

After decades of building from underserved airports and small cities, it has moved into hubs like Denver and Philadelphia. After growing on the business of leisure passengers, it is moving to capture more business flyers. And after nurturing an employee-first culture in an industry loaded with labor strife, it recently bought out 8,700 veterans to cut costs.

But the change most visible to consumers will happen Nov. 8, when, for the first time in its 36 years, Southwest will tweak its boarding process, that unique, loved-or-hated experience so integral to the airline's image of no-frills, efficient egalitarianism.

Gone will be the "cattle call" ─ or what aviation analyst Michael Boyd calls the "fall of Saigon method" ─ where passengers sit or squat in line for an hour or more for first-come, first-served seating on a flight. Replacing it will be something more akin to "bingo boarding," where checking in ─ up to 24 hours in advance ─ a passenger will be assigned to a group of five people. Those small groups will then board in order and pick their seats when they get on the plane.

For his frequent trips to Canada, Tom Burke, a Dallas-based consultant, no longer worries about sky-high charges for changing his plane reservation, booking too close to his trip or booking during a peak travel season.

Burke last year paid Air Canada a flat $6,858 for 20 flights between eastern Canada and many of the 53 U.S. cities where the carrier operates, including his home airport, Dallas/Fort Worth. That means each round trip costs $686 no matter when Burke takes it during the 12-month life of the deal. He's eligible for free upgrades to business class, and he can book the trip up to one hour before flight time, and change or cancel without penalty.

Selling bulk travel to individual customers is just one of a half-dozen innovations by Air Canada in recent years that have U.S. rivals glancing northward to monitor their acceptance by travelers reports USA Today. Once a lumbering money-loser, it's now a profitable pioneer, finding new ways to sell passengers only the services and amenities they want and nothing more.

With Air Canada, a traveler can, for example, cut fares by agreeing to leave a suitcase at home or by forgoing loyalty points. Or the traveler can choose to pay more for reserving a seat. In short, Canada's biggest and oldest carrier is showing its U.S. competitors a new way of doing business that could become the future of air travel.

A recent survey of 246 American Express travel agents found that more women are traveling together to bond and escape stress, that they're spending more and looking beyond traditional spa and shopping weekends. Vegas bachelorette parties, for instance, have never been more popular.

With brands such as Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Hermès, France is a world leader in exporting notions of luxury to the rest of the world. In the upmarket hotel sector, however, the international pace is set by American and Asian chains says MSNBC.

It is an anomaly that has caught the attention of Gilles Pélisson, chief executive of Accor. Best known as the operator of cheap and mid-range hotels such as Ibis, Mercure and Novotel, the French group hopes to emulate France's handbag and jewellery makers by colonizing the top end of the market.

With this goal in mind, its plans to try to give its Sofitel business ─ which currently ranks as predominantly "upmarket" ─ a nudge upwards into the "luxury" bracket, where it would compete more forcefully with the likes of Intercontinental, Westin, Park Hyatt and St Regis.

Mr Pélisson believes that some less inspiring venues have compromised the brand's image. Accor plans to hive off 35 such hotels into a new chain aimed mainly at business travelers, where they will trade under the Pullman name, a brand from the golden age of luxury train travel that the French company is resuscitating.

The slicing and dicing doesn't stop there. Particularly atmospheric properties will be dubbed Sofitel Legends, while boutique-style venues will bear the name So by Sofitel. There will also be renovations and new openings, such as the recently-unveiled Sofitel Wanda Beijing, the first Sofitel to feature a restaurant bearing the name of Accor's high-end catering business, Lenôtre.

The hope is that a more consistently upmarket positioning, combined with a renewed emphasis on what France likes to think of as "le French touch", will justify a major price hike, from an average room rate of €82 ($118) per room to €172 by 2010. But raising prices is one thing ─ stimulating the lasting demand that will keep them high is another. In addition, Simon Champion, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, doubts that Sofitel will have the scale to secure a meaningful pipeline of management contracts in the luxury hotel sector, especially with all the slimming-down and internal brand segmentation.

The survey found 80% of respondents were concerned about germs, bacteria and viruses when traveling. Airplanes were deemed the most germy, according to 28% of those polled, with public transportation next, followed by restaurants, hotels, and airports.

In keeping with the germaphobia, 55% of travelers said they tend to wash and disinfect their hands more often while traveling with 27% of Americans ─ up from 22% in 2005 ─ taking disinfectant, cleaning supplies, shower shoes, pillows, towels or linens, when going on a trip.

The two concepts first used by the airport Hyatt ─ the iTaste and The Virtual Menu ─ target solo airport travelers and hotel guests with time to kill between flights. Company expense accounts don't hurt, either. The airport Hyatt is the first hotel to feature iTaste and Virtual Menu, but Stephens said Hyatt wants to take this program national ─ potentially to its 118 hotels.

"We were looking for innovative ways to engage our customers in the products and menu items that we serve," Stephens said. "We're, in essence, test marketing this, even though we've created it. We're providing a lot of feedback as to how it's going and how it's selling."

According to the Dallas Business Journal the Grand Hyatt's iTaste program began three months ago, consisting of a video iPod and tasting tray filled with cheeses, wines, or chocolates, served at a community table. The guest is guided through a 30-minute podcast specific to their selection, with tips on how to pick the best wine, cow-, sheep- and goat-milk cheese or chocolates. Cost runs $25 for wine or cheese, and $20 for chocolate.

The iPod is on loan, but the diner takes home a DVD copy of the podcast. Stephens said his restaurant sells between 10 and 15 every day. Since iTaste was introduced in its Moka/M Lounge, the hotel has seen a 19% revenue increase in appetizers, with iTaste wine representing 26% of all wine sales in Moka.

According to New Study by TWI Surveys, Inc. on Behalf of Society for New Communications Research, social media and conversational marketing will outpace that of traditional marketing by 2012. Nearly 57% of respondents report that in 5 years time, what they spend on conversational marketing will be greater than that of traditional marketing, while another 24% believed it would be the same as traditional marketing says the Center for Media Research. Significantly, 81% of marketers believe that in 5 years they'll be spending as much or more on conversational marketing vs. traditional marketing.

The findings indicate that while social media adoption is still very much in its infancy, communications professionals foresee significant growth in adoption and spending over the next five years. Of the 260 respondents:

Joseph Jaffe, a Senior Fellow of the SNCR, said "The rise of digital media continues to make significant inroads into the mainstream media pie. Conversational marketing investment will make up the third pillar of the new marketing model." In addition, Jaffe adds Community and Conversation to the Four P's of marketing: Product, Place, Price and Promotion.

Responding marketers said they planned to increase their pay-per-click budgets by at least 11% in 2008. One-third of search marketers whose spending was average said they planned to do so on Google AdWords. Respondents rated both PPC and search engine optimization as effective search marketing tactics.

"Just as the personal nature of word of mouth makes it one of the most accepted forms of marketing among consumers, so is search engine optimization, a somewhat stronger tactic for increasing ROI than is paid search advertising," said David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer.

"That's because for SEO, as with word of mouth, the absence of overt marketing cues makes it a more powerful influencer," he said. "At the same time, the more subtle nature of SEO makes it harder for marketers to gauge than more traditional direct response media such as e-mail or paid search." MarketingSherpa said that most of the budgets were growing because search marketers thought that keyword prices would go up, according to Stefan Tornquist, the company's research director.

Stars, after all, suffer wear and tear. A film personality on a press tour may spend weeks traveling across continents to promote a new film, chatting with journalists, attending premieres, making television appearances ─ without a minute's break in between. Tokyo one day, Hong Kong the next. Exhaustion and jet-lag take their toll.

Brad Wilson, partner and CEO of the James Hotel in Chicago, says the midsized spot proves popular with celebrities because of its luxury amenities, including 24-hour full service gym and 24-hour concierge service, and for the ultimate refresher, a selection of in-room spa treatments. "We like to think our main draw is our friendly, genuine and intuitive service," he says.

Celebrity travel agent Bill Fischer, who charges a $100,000 entry fee for his services, says that privacy is the major factor when setting up hotel rooms for famous names. "What these people want most is to avoid the paparazzi," he says.

The secluded location of London's Soho Hotel, hidden away on a Soho side street, helps explain its popularity with such stars as Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. Amenities include pop-art-filled walls, on-site screening rooms and a hush-hush hotel staff.

Even when they're close to home, Hollywood royalty sometimes need a place to get away for a couple of nights. That's why big guns like George Clooney and Eva Longoria check into the Sofitel Los Angeles, famed for its soothing and restorative "SoBed," a king-sized sleeper with feather and down duvet. The hotel is home to the swanky SIMON LA restaurant, an outpost of Rande Gerber's Stone Rose Lounge, and to luxury treatment center LeSpa.

For stars traveling to New York, Midtown's Chambers Hotel is an urban oasis. It boasts its own art gallery, with original works by John Waters and Roberta Smith. Guests can take advantage of 24-hour butler service and an on-call masseuse. Immediately at hand are an Exhale spa, a John Barrett salon, and luxury department store, Henri Bendel, for personal shopping.

The system, which will first be implemented at the citizenM hotel near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, consists of pre-fabricated rooms which can be instantly brought online by connecting just four cables, which enable an RFID keycard, flat-screen entertainment center, free wireless, and a "MoodPad" lighting controller which controls the lighting, shades and temperature to set the appropriate ambiance.

Settings stored on the RFID card can be changed remotely, so guests can login and set their preferences before they arrive, and Philips says all this tech will help hotel owners cut costs by up to 50%, which sounds a little too good to be true.

Hotel construction is booming in the Chicago area, as project starts through the first three quarters almost doubled compared with the same period last year while the larger office and multifamily sectors slowed, according to a report released last week.

The answer, it seems, rests on the shoulders of the people who buy our brands and recommend them to others ─ not with advertisers, marketers or consultants. That's why Advertising Age went straight to the source by visiting people's homes in Columbus, Ohio (a test-marketing Mecca) to do the unthinkable: mess with their media. We deprived them of their TiVos, their laptops and their cellphones. We added ourselves to their e-mail lists. We asked them to journal their feelings and attitudes. We discovered that consumers don't do what they say, and that they've become experts in ignoring and rejecting messages. They can instantly recognize messages that are irrelevant or ill-timed.

More important, we learned that consumers aren't simply tuning us out; they just want us to tune them in. Spending time with consumers in the real world, where and when they actually engage with media, enabled us to see that when they spend time with media, they do it with a purpose, goal or need that drives their behavior. They enter different modes, or mind-sets, that drive their choices, actions and receptivity to marketing messages.

Consumers don't think in terms of media when they're actually experiencing it. They think in terms of what they want to do and what they want to get out of their media experience. If they're craving entertainment, they want to be entertained. If they're seeking knowledge, they want information. If they feel like sharing, discovering or expressing themselves, they want us as marketers to help make that possible.

To be successful in this new marketing era, we need not focus on the media, but the modes that consumers are in when they interact with and experience our messages. Regardless of whether the medium is online, TV, print or radio, the key is to understand the consumer's desired experience and craft our messages to help deliver that experience to consumers. When we align our messages with the modes that consumers are in, we can actually become a part of the experience that consumers are seeking.

Fares came down sharply when Virgin began service in August, reports The Wall Street Journal, and despite some price increases lately, ticket prices remain lower than before the new competition took off. For the past couple of years, the cheapest round-trip fares between Los Angeles and New York have been $350-$400, says Rick Seaney, president of FareCompare.com. Today, prices are under $300. "Virgin America has definitely driven the price-point down," he said.

Travelers are enjoying the price cut, and the service Virgin offers. The airline has a seat-back entertainment system with movies, television, games and 3,000 songs. Each Virgin plane has eight white-leather massage-chair first-class seats ─ a first for discount airlines. Highest price: $699 one-way, compared with about $2,500 one-way on AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines.

Airlines have long lavished attention and effort on the New York-to-Los Angeles route. It's the commuter line of movie stars and money moguls ─ one of the most heavily traveled airline routes, and often one of the most profitable, too.

Small wonder that airlines give Los Angeles-New York flights prestigious flight numbers like Flight 1. And small wonder, too, that so many airlines have tried to compete over the years flying between the nation's two largest cities. Trans World Airlines began nonstop flights between Los Angeles and New York in 1953, and since then, many airlines ─ People Express, MGM Grand Air, Tower Air, JetBlue and America West just to name a few ─ have tried to wedge their way in among the big carriers. Most, however, have failed.

But Virgin America has deep pockets and long-term dreams. It is already attacking cross-country markets from a California base. From San Francisco and Los Angeles, Virgin now flies to New York and Washington. (The airline also flies from San Francisco to both Los Angeles and Las Vegas.)

Roxanne Kimmel, who works for a Los Angeles ad agency and flies to New York about once a month, was won over by Virgin's entertainment system on a flight in early October. "I watched a movie, I ordered food and listened to radio," she said. "I'm going to use this airline a lot."

Other travelers have had more of a mixed experience. David Seidler, a Hollywood writer, paid only $139 to get to New York, and while he loved the price, he was less thrilled with the cheese-and-crackers snack he bought for $7, and the $10 fee on Virgin to check his second bag. "If they keep their prices down and the quality of their service up, they will make inroads," said Mr. Seidler.

That's according to a survey conducted by research firm Synovate Travel & Leisure research on behalf of Minnetonka-based by Carlson Hotels Worldwide. According to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal the survey, released Wednesday, polled more than 1,000 international travelers worldwide.

Survey takers also cited screaming children as one of the most annoying parts of business travel, with 61% of people identifying loud youngsters as irritating. About 47% of people also complained about incessant talkers. Only 32% said hassles of airport security were irritating.

The US is the largest market for inbound tourism to Europe, which representing an annual spend of $40 billion. While the US dollar is at its weakest against both sterling and the euro for 15 years, demand has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient, according to ETOA.

Executive director Tom Jenkins said: "We normally expect demand for Europe to track currency fluctuations. A strong dollar normally sees a surge in demand, a weak dollar a drop. Indeed, the collapse in demand for Europe from America in 2003 probably had more to do with the state of the currency than reaction to 9/11.

"What is surprising is that the connection between currency and demand has not been absolute. Since 2003 we have seen consistent growth in European arrivals from the US, despite a decline in the value of the dollar. If we were to have another return to the dollar's historic levels against European currencies, demand from the US could become overwhelming.”

Demand for business travel services will exceed supply in 2008, driving increases in rates for airfare, hotels, car rentals and corporate meetings, according to the annual Global Business Travel Forecast from American Express.

"In 2008, we expect a domestic trip inclusive of airfare, car rental and hotel stay will increase 6%, or $63, bringing the average trip cost to a total of approximately $1,110," Mike Streit, vice president and global leader for American Express Business Travel Advisory Services said in a statement. "For an international trip, the increase is expected to be nearly 7%, or approximately $205, bringing the cost of an average trip to $3,171."

Factors contributing to overall increases in average costs include premium pricing for airplane seats with flat beds or more legroom; heavy demand for hotels in certain U.S. cities like New York, Washington and Chicago, where rates could rise as much as 14%, and more taxes and fees on car rentals, the report said.

The report also concluded that high demand and slow growth of supply for hotel rooms around the world will not only force prices up but may also lead to more minimum and maximum stay requirements, as well as instances when corporate rates do not apply.

While executives from InterContinental Hotels Group touted change as the key to improving the chain’s global lodging efforts during the past few days at their annual Americas Investors and Leadership Conference, a sea change is about to unfold for its legacy Holiday Inn brand and its offshoot, Holiday Inn Express.

Now grouped under the umbrella of the Holiday Inn brand family, both lodging choices are tossing out their longstanding logos and signage in favor of more contemporary typefaces, shapes and colors that will affect everything connected with the brands’ images, from monument signs to website icons to marketing tools, as part of a worldwide initiative to relaunch the brands as more trend forward, more consistent in quality and service, and better equipped to meet the needs of both existing and emerging travelers.

According to HotelBusiness this positioning push also will include for both brands redesigned guestrooms; upgraded bedding, bath and amenity packages; revamped front-desk areas with custom back-wall presentations; exterior lighting features in brand colors that will appear above and on the columns of the arrival canopy; modern landscaping; signature scents and customized music in public spaces.

In addition to losing the backward-leaning letters of in its logos, the brands also are making a clean sweep of clutter ─ paper and otherwise ─ in the guestrooms and at the registration desk in order to be perceived as stylistically “simple and clean, open and airy.”

As the brands transition, new design guidelines for FF&E also are being proffered. For Holiday Inn, the design theme is “accessible comfort,” while at Holiday Inn Express “inspired simplicity” is the attitude. In both cases, the designs play off the current trends in lifestyle hotels, albeit without any sharp cutting edges.

According to the Los Angeles Times the city by the bay has topped the category for 17 of the past 18 years. (Santa Fe grabbed the slot in 1992.) New York and Charleston, S.C., took the second and third spots in the list of top U.S. cities. The magazine compiles the results from a survey of 28,000 subscribers.

La Scalinatella Hotel on Capri, Italy, not only took the top slot among Europe's best hotels, but also received a perfect score of 100 from readers, which has only happened once before in the 20-year history of the readers' awards.

Two new categories were added this year to the survey. SilkAir was named best foreign air route carrier, a category for airlines that do not have U.S. destinations; and Four Seasons properties took the top four spots in a new category for resorts in Hawaii, which used to be lumped in with other Pacific Rim destinations.

Other bests from the survey include Florence, Rome and Venice, Italy, grabbing the top three spots for European cities; Bangkok, Hong Kong and Chiang Mai, Thailand, as the top three Asian cities; and Bermuda, St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands and St. Barthelemy in the French West Indies topping the list of best Caribbean/Atlantic islands.

Among cruise lines, Regent Seven Seas, Grand Circle Cruise Line and Seabourn won the top three spots for best small ship lines; while Crystal Cruises, Regent Seven Seas and Disney were named best large-ship cruise lines. (Regent has both small and large vessels.)

“What makes a hotel hip?” asks Yahoo. "It's not just the feeling of 'wow,' because you can get wow from anything. You can get wow from a 100-foot-atrium in a corporate hotel," Herbert Ypma, author of the "Hip Hotels" guidebook series, said in an interview from his London offices.

Instead, Ypma looks for "highly individual places" that are "capturing and reflecting and radiating the notion of travel" with some element that is unforgettable ─ whether it's stunning decor, extraordinary architecture or a breathtaking location.

There are 14 books in the 'Hip Hotels' series, including the most recent, a paperback version of the "Hip Hotels Atlas" (Thames & Hudson, $36.95), that has just been released in the U.S. The lushly illustrated atlas offers descriptions of hotels on six continents.

Some of the properties in the book are luxury accommodations with pricetags to match - like the Chateau de Bagnols in Bagnols, France, a restored medieval castle where rooms begin at $675 a night. But others are moderately priced, including several of the seven listings for the continental U.S.

For example, listed rates for the Korakia Pensione, in Palm Springs, Calif., start at $159. The hotel is lauded as "a place of hand-washed linen sheets, canopied four-poster beds, lace, ceiling fans, slate and wooden floors, furniture from Rajasthan, chairs from Mexico, glassware from France, black-and-white photography and lots of old books." Rates at The Wawbeek in Tupper Lake, N.Y., which offers log cabins with fireplaces and grand views of the Adirondacks, are listed as beginning at $140.

Other continental U.S. properties in the "Hip Hotels Atlas" are Dunton Hot Springs, Dolores, Colo.; The Home Ranch, Clark, Colo.; Cibolo Creek Ranch, Marfa, Texas; Sundance, in Sundance, Utah; and Canoe Bay, Chetek, Wis.

All over the world, people are traveling internationally as never before. And major hotel chains are aggressively planting the flags of their various brands in cities and suburbs around the globe ─ so that a Chinese traveler who likes the Holiday Inn in Guangzhou, for example, might be inclined to stay at a Holiday Inn on a trip to Los Angeles.

The idea is to “create brand loyalty, which requires brand presence” in a global marketplace where travel is surging, said Bjorn Hanson, the head analyst at the hospitality division of PricewaterhouseCoopers. This explains, for example, why Hilton Hotels recently announced a plan to open 25 of its Hampton and Garden Inn hotels ─ familiar brands on American highways ─ in Russia and across Eastern Europe.

“The Internet and low-cost airlines have been massive enablers of travelers” worldwide, said Stevan D. Porter, the president of the Americas division of InterContinental Hotels, which, with more than 560,000 rooms in 3,800 hotels, has the most rooms of any hotel chain in the world.

Like most major hotel companies, says The New York Times, InterContinental has a portfolio of brands, each intended to appeal to a certain segment of the market. Typically, a hotel company will have a top luxury brand (Ritz-Carlton, for example, is Marriott International’s); a big urban luxury brand with space for meetings and conventions (Hilton Hotels’ flagship Hiltons, for example); and an array of limited-service, midmarket lodging (Hilton’s Hampton Inn and Marriott’s Courtyard and Residence Inns). Some also have brands in the budget categories.

Thanks to assiduous marketing, most frequent travelers have a good idea what to expect from a particular brand in the United States, where there were more than 47,000 hotels with 4.4 million rooms at the end of last year, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Domestic hotel profits were $26.6 billion on revenue of $133.4 billion, up from $22.6 billion in profit on $122.7 billion in revenue in 2005, the trade group says, citing data from Smith Travel Research.

Marriott, for example, has 30 hotels throughout China representing most of its brands, including three Ritz-Carltons and three JW Marriotts, its other luxury brand. Six more Ritz-Carltons are scheduled to open in China by 2010, Marriott said.

Whether it is business or leisure travel (and sometimes a combination of the two), the biggest single travel-spending demographic group is the baby boom generation, not only in the United States and Europe but also, to a lesser extent, in Asia. This group, in turn, has spawned a generation of savvy travelers.

The US is projected to host almost 54 million international visitors during 2007, according to Department of Commerce forecasts. The forecast clearly exceeds the previous record of more than 51.2 million international travelers in 2000, and would be five percent higher than the 2006 result.

In the period until 2011 it is expected Australian visitation to the US will rise by 26%. Strong growth from other Asia Pacific nations is also expected, including Korea (27%), India (66%), China (81%) and Taiwan (23%). The largest Asian market and second-largest overseas market, Japan, is forecasted to grow by 17%.