The opening general session will feature an industry overview with first-half 2010 data as well as a point-counterpoint debate regarding the state of the industry through the eyes of STR president Mark Lomanno and vice president Jan Freitag. Jeff Higley of HotelNewsNow.com will moderate the session.

Following is a deeper look at some of the other sessions of The 2010 Hotel Data Conference, which is hosted by STR and HotelNewsNow.com:

• Pipeline and U.S. Chain Scale Trends: An early discussion about the potential changes in STR’s chain-scale segment lineup will be part of this session. Also featured will be an analysis of new construction and conversion data from the past few years.
  
  
• Consumer Business & Leisure Traveler Trends: A look at a survey about consumers’ willingness to pay for hotel rooms and brands used by business travelers and leisure guests during the past three months will highlight this discussion.
  
  
• Hear Diane Parmerlee of Crow Holdings get inside the heads of STR Founder and CEO Randy Smith and President Mark Lomanno. Advance reservations are required for Randy and Mark’s Fireside Chat sessions—and attendees will be able to ask the two industry icons (almost) anything!
  
  
• The Global Performance Trends sessions will provide a look at some of the major market forecasts from around the world.
  
  
• Top U.S. Market Performance: Brad Garner, STR’s COO, will look at some of the hot and not-so-hot markets in the U.S. He’ll delve into the Top 25 Markets as a segment and examine transient and group dynamics, seasonally adjusted occupancies and ADRs, and even look into the crystal ball and provide forecasts for a few major cities.
  
  
• And finally, Randy Smith will present awards to seven hotels that have earned the distinction of receiving the inaugural STR Best Performing Hotel awards.

The registration fee for the conference is $695 and the Loews Vanderbilt is offering conference attendees a special discounted room rate of $140. Visit www.HotelDataConference.com to register and to obtain more information about the conference.

The Platinum sponsor for this year’s conference is Gaylord Hotels. Other sponsors include:

• Gold sponsors—Cornell University School of Hotel Administration The Center for Hospitality Research, M3 and TRAVELCLICK
• Bronze sponsors—PKF Hospitality Research, Rubicon, DePaul University College of Commerce and Hotel Assets Group
• Patron sponsors—Dometic and DirecTV

About STR | STR (www.str.com) provides clients-including hotel operators, developers, financiers, analysts and suppliers to the hotel industry-access to hotel research with regular and custom reports covering the United States, Canada, Mexico and Caribbean. STR provides a single source of global hotel data covering daily and monthly performance data, forecasts, annual profitability, global pipelines and census information. STR founded the STR family of companies and is proudly associated with STR Global, RRC Associates, STR Analytics, and HotelNewsNow.com. STR also founded the Hotel Data Conference (www.Hoteldataconference.com).