Few would argue the commercial real estate market is immune to the effects of current turmoil in the capital markets, but the lodging sector, with overall healthy fundamentals, is proving to be fairly resistant to the spreading infection of national economic woes in large part brought on by the collapse of the subprime residential mortgage industry last summer.

While an increasing number of economic indicators suggest the United States is currently experiencing that dreaded nine-letter word — recession — this is not the first time the nation’s hotel sector has been sorely tested by major national problems and has had to prove its resiliency.

A HEALTHY CORRECTION

In this decade alone the lodging industry has rebounded from significant declines in travel and subsequent demand for hotel rooms, with most notable declines due to the impact of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the ensuing threat and eventuality of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the SARS