TAMPA - As jets take off across busy Spruce Street from Tampa International Airport, workers steady huge wooden forms for the fifth-floor walls of a Hilton Garden Inn.

The hotel and two others in his 20-acre Avion Park project will open before fans arrive for the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa, says John McKibbon, chief executive of McKibbon Hotel Management.

Two miles west, a 16-story Westin Hotel will soon rise on Rocky Point, says developer Dilip Kanji. A mile east, insurance giant MetLife plans a high-end hotel at its mixed-use MetWest development, approved by the Tampa City Council this month.

Westshore marks Ground Zero for a hotel building boom. But the surge, mirroring a national trend in new lodging construction, reaches across the bay area.

Forty-one area projects are in the works - under construction, on the drawing board or somewhere in between, according to Lodging Econometrics, a Portsmouth, N.H., lodging real estate research firm.

Announced projects include new upscale chain brands such as Starwood's hip W Hotels in Tampa and independents like Grand Bohemian in downtown St. Petersburg and Sandpearl on Clearwater Beach.

Clearwater developer Sandip Patel is working on what would be Tampa Bay's first shot at a five-star hotel: a Ritz-Carlton on the site of a Radisson on Rocky Point once owned by sports mogul George Steinbrenner.

Many won't clear financing or regulatory hurdles. About half of lodging projects that haven't reached construction never get built, says Duane Vinson, vice president of Smith Travel Research.

Tighter lending restrictions resulting from the subprime home mortgage crash could sink marginal projects. Some analysts question whether a glut of new hotel rooms will outpace demand.

But rising room rates and strong demand in places like Westshore, the area's biggest office district, will keep many projects on track, says Daniel Peek of the Plascencia Group, a national hotel broker in Tampa.

"We're going to see a lot of new supply and new brands," says Peek, who runs the company's luxury hotel division. "There will be a half dozen to 10 new hotels in Hillsborough County and a half dozen in Pinellas."

Hotels bounce back

Today's boom got its start three years ago.

The hotel industry bottomed out in 2003 as a recession and fallout from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks decimated business and leisure travel. New projects dried up and developers tore down old hotels to build condos or other commercial properties.

By 2004, the economy was rebounding and travel picked up. Room rates jumped between 4 percent and 7 percent annually over the past four years nationally.

Rates rose faster in the Tampa Bay area, with the daily average at $109.81 for the first half of 2007 - up 29 percent or nearly $25 from the same period in 2003.

Substantial numbers of new rooms are just coming onto the market because construction of a 125-room hotel takes 30 months, says Patrick Ford, president of Lodging Econometrics. "If you were feeling good in 2004 about hotels, yours is opening in 2007," he said.

His company projects that developers will complete 100,924 rooms nationally this year. That will jump to 159,000 in 2009, up nearly 60 percent.

The Tampa Bay area has 5,000 rooms in the pipeline from planning to construction, according to Smith Travel Research.

That's dwarfed by mega-destinations like Las Vegas (38.000) and Orlando (12,800) and high-growth areas such as Phoenix (17,800) and metro Washington, D.C., (15,000). But it's in the middle of the pack among large markets as a percentage of existing rooms.

Booked early in week

The sweet spot for Westshore hoteliers falls early in the work week, especially during the busy spring tourist season.

Mondays through Wednesdays are frequently booked solid with business travelers, says Darlene Limon, a veteran of the Wyndham Westshore, which reopens this month as the Intercontinental Tampa. Throw in a convention in downtown Tampa, all the better.

"It's a gift," she says. "The business saturates Westshore and spills into the suburbs, north Tampa, even Pinellas."

No wonder developers are working on at least seven new hotel projects in the district.

Those with dreams of building upscale, full-service hotels could face big obstacles.

Westshore has scant available land and what's for sale comes at a steep price. Construction prices throughout the bay area eased slightly - as housing construction cooled - but remain high.

All those expenses get baked into what hotels charge for rooms. High-end developers have tried to offset costs by including pricey condos on the top floors or in a nearby building. Sales would provide cash up front and lower debt costs.

But weak demand for residential real estate has forced developers to reduce the number of condos from hotel projects or eliminate them altogether.

Kanji cut 20 condos from his Westin on Rocky Point when only a handful sold in six months of marketing.

Developers of the Ritz-Carlton project, however, told Tampa officials they plan to include 48 condos in the hotel tower and build a second tower with 136 private residences.

Peek, the hotel consultant, says condos will make it tougher to obtain financing for a new hotel.

"Projects where (condos) are a substantial component are raising a lot of questions," he says.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

Hotel room rates

Hillsborough/Pinellas

Year Rate Percent change

2001 $84.69

2002 $80.18 - 5.3

2003 $79.92 - 0.3

2004 $82.03 + 2.6

2005 $89.67 + 9.3

2006 $97.56 + 8.8

2007* $109.81 + 6.3

National

Year Rate Percent change

2001 $83.98

2002 $82.74 - 1.5

2003 $82.87 + 0.2

2004 $86.32 + 4.2

2005 $91.06 + 5.5

2006 $97.73 + 7.3

2007* $102.96 + 5.7

* January through June. Source: Smith Travel Research