Obviously luxury is still a selling point with new hotel construction projects. More than 500 new first class and luxury hotels with nearly 200,000 rooms will be opened worldwide in the next months. According to tophotelprojects.com 28 percent of the hotel openings happen in Europe, 27 percent in North America and 41 percent in East Asia. Most of the 32 largest hotels (over 500 rooms) will open in Asia. The biggest is the Las Vegas Sands’ project Marina Bay Sands Hotel Singapore with 2,600 rooms.

Some of the most interesting new hotels (to be opened in early 2009) are:
Planet Hollywood Towers L.A./USA (1,228 rooms, Shangri-La Hotel (636 rooms) & Traders Hotel (1,239 rooms) Macao/China, W Hotel Fort Lauderdale, Florida/USA (482 rooms), Palazzo Versace Dubai/UAE (215 hotel rooms), Andel’s Hotel Berlin/Germany (557 rooms).

tophotelprojects.com disclosed more than 170 new hotel construction projects with over 36,000 rooms in November and December. A sample of new top hotel projects:
Scandic Hotel Hamburg/Germany (325 rooms, opening scheduled for 2011)
InterContinental Resort & Spa Marrakech/Morocco (180 rooms, opening scheduled for 2011) Clarion Hotel Arlanda near Stockholm/Sweden (400 rooms, opening scheduled for 2010) Fairmont Resort & Spa on Corfu Island/Greece (240 rooms, opening scheduled for 2012) St. Regis on Saadiyat Island near Abu Dhabi/UAE (280 rooms, opening scheduled for 2010).

"After the first climax of the financial crunch, of course we watch the hotel projects market even more closely", Rolf W. Schmidt, managing owner of tophotelprojects.com reported. Up to now we noticed only a few delays or even aborts of hotel construction or modification projects.” The number of the recently announced hotel construction projects show that top hotel investments have not been hit by the financial crisis yet.

Main facts of tophotelprojects.com
Number of hotel projects worldwide: 3,070 (with 753,929 rooms)
Number of hotel rooms per project in average: 249
First class hotel projects: 1,515
Luxury hotel projects: 1,368
Projects by regions:   
Africa 120
Asia 1,009
Europe 1,165
North America 703