"The newly renovated Red Lion Hotel Seattle South is the first full service hotel south of downtown Seattle and is within a 15 minute drive of most downtown business centers and tourist attractions,'' said Tom Murray, chief operating officer of Red Lion Hotels, Inc. and senior vice president - hotel division for Hilton Hotels Corporation.

Profits from the hotel industry are expected to flatten out over the next year or two as the economy and consumer confidence trends down, corporations and individuals pull back on discretionary spending and lenders grow more stingy with their capital, says Joel Heiser, the San Francisco-based executive managing director for Hospitality Asset Advisors.

Paul Jinneman, a partner in the Seattle-based hotel consultancy Jinneman, Kennedy, & Associates PS, tells GlobeSt.com that transactions in the Northwest have ground to a trickle, and most every market except Downtown Seattle is still recovering from overbuilding that started about five years ago.

"The decline in the economy will lengthen out that cycle while occupancy picks up and kicks off another development round," says Jinneman, whose company keeps track of the industry in Oregon, Washington and Alaska. "Things have definitely softened but not to the point of distressed sales."

If the slowdown in demand and occupancy continues through the summer, which Jinneman anticipates, "we may see more transactions as non-hoteliers who've invested in limited-service assets in their home towns and not seen the return they'd hoped for decide to get out of the business.