The first Americas Lodging Investment Summit at LA Live started Monday under dark clouds and heavy rain — at least by Los Angeles standards — but by the end of the event, the sun was shining outside the JW Marriott and inside the mood was just as bright.

The forecasts and outlooks for the year from most speakers were positive, as were conversations I had and overheard with other attendees. There were no major news announcements, no new brands — a staple at past summits during the heyday — but the conference was definitely not as dire as the last few. The cautious optimism of the past seemed to be replaced by “business-as-usual” optimism and the belief things were getting back to normal.

Yes, concerns over macroeconomic issues like the European debt crisis and the upcoming presidential elections here weren’t forgotten, nor were questions about the availability of credit and the mounting CMBS maturities coming due this year and next.

But there were lenders on and off stage talking about lending to hotels: from the most prominent, Wells Fargo’s Greg Wolkom (“it’s a good time to get back into it, there’s not a lot of senior lenders out there”; to Raphael Fishbach, a principal at Mesa West Capital and one of the few underwriting for transitional and deeper turnaround opportunities with a good story, more risk and more reward; and Jackson Hsieh of UBS, whose firm is in the process of securitizing $300 million in loans already this year; and Jon Wright of Access Point Financial, who is the rare breed providing PIP and FF&E financing.

Sure, the amounts available and costs aren’t what they used to be, and you have to be a strong borrower and/or willing to offer a guarantee, but maybe that isn’t the worst thing. Construction lending is still nearly impossible to find, but the upside to that is supply will continue to be at historic lows allowing the operating side of the industry to continue its recovery.

Some other reflections and scribbles in my ALIS notebooks…

• The venue was excellent, spacious, comfortable and well serviced by the Marriott employees. Early on, there seemed to be discontent among some attendees about getting to and from the various areas inside the JW Marriott and over to the Nokia Theatre for the general sessions and keynote addresses (Trump, Zell & Marriott). Large curtains and tight security kept those who didn’t have a badge from entering the hotel, which caught a few off guard and drew some negative reactions, but ultimately made networking among actual attendees much easier. Virtually every exec I spoke to, from some of Marriott’s biggest competitors, said they liked the venue.

LA Live provided plenty of quality food & beverage options to satisfy the 2,400 attendees, but if you did want to adventure outside of the massive complex, you needed a cab and directions. The event in San Diego the last couple years was ideal in that you could easily walk from the Hilton Bayfront to the Gaslamp Quarter and a plethora of entertainment and eating options.

• Beyond the general outlook of the industry, the other main topics of conversation at ALIS were digital distribution and the big brands’ launch of Room Key, a hotel search engine clearly targeting the higher-priced OTAs. Every brand exec I spoke to — including several from non-Room Key participants so far — was enthused about its launch and interested in joining. Operators and asset managers surveyed also were intrigued with its potential.

On Tuesday, the “Distribution Channel Analysis: a Guide for Hotels” was released by the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Foundation. Although brand.com sites grabbed the lion’s share of bookings (16.4% of demand and 18.5% of revenue), OTAs grew to 11% demand and 7.7% of revenue. The report suggested owners and managers needed to focus on shifting demand share and focus on profit management, not revenue management. (Read the February issue of Lodging Hospitality for more on the study and Room Key.)

Day one of this year’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit underway in Los Angeles produced no surprises: no big announcements, no rhetorical gaffes, very few laughs and only a couple of spontaneous applause lines. It’s the beginning of the year, following a pretty good year for the industry, so the mood among the 2,400 delegates at the JW Marriott at LA Live is one of optimism on what the rest of 2012 will bring.

At yesterday’s opening general session in the spacious (7,000 seats vs. 2,400 attendees at ALIS) Nokia Theater, conference chairman Jim Burba unveiled results of a delegate survey that demonstrated the giddy optimism that probably resonates throughout the industry. More than nine out of 10 of those surveyed believe RevPAR will grow again in 2012 and their individual companies will also show positive growth this year. Perhaps more surprisingly, 53% of the group believes they’ll be more hotel development this year than in 2011. Of course, STR says just 373 new hotels opened last year, so it won’t take much to post an increase in lodging construction.

The data gurus from STR, PKF-Hospitality Research and HVS also fueled the general upbeat outlook. Using the catchphrase “see the green in 2013,” Jan Freitag of STR forecast a year that will beat 2011, a year in which the industry sold a record one billion-plus roomnights. Mark Woodworth of PKF-HR described the future as “headwinds diminish, tailwinds develop.” And Suzanne Mellen of HVS sees hotel transactions increasing this year and spreading to more diverse markets than the top 10, which saw 73% of the action last year.

With all the good vibes floating around the JW Marriott, it’s hard not to jump on board the future is bright train. That attitude, of course, can lead to excess, not this year certainly and probably not soon, but eventually.

The only wave of dissent that seems to fill the conference hallways centers on the conference’s new anti-lounge lizard policy. In order to keep non-payer gatecrashers from cruising the hotel bars and restaurants during the conference, the organizers have barricaded entrance to the hotel beyond the front desk to anyone not wearing a valid badge. The tactic led one pundit (me) from paraphrasing President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech in Berlin as a possible slogan for the dissenters: “Mr. Burba, tear down this wall.”

It’s good to see President Obama reads our Front Desk blog and Editor Ed Watkins (Tourism: A Winning Platform in Presidential Politics). It’s even better to see the president finally take action on an issue that will not only help travel, tourism and the hotel industry, but also the entire economy. The executive order and tourism initiative announced by the president Thursday in Orlando’s Disney World could bring 1.3 million jobs to the U.S. and produce $859 billion in economic output by 2020.

Those numbers, courtesy of the Discover America Partnership co-chaired by the AH&LA, would be reached if the U.S. recaptured the historic share of international travel it had in 2000. The order from the president charges the Department of Commerce, working with the Departments of State, Homeland Security and a slew of others, with creating a task force to develop a strategy to promote unique U.S. destinations and experiences, reduce wait times for visas in countries like China and Brazil and make the U.S. Global Entry program permanent.

U.S. market share of spending by international travelers fell from 17% to 11% in the decade since 2000, in large part because of international competition and more stringent security requirements since 9/11. Reforming the current and antiquated visa system is the first step to regaining those travelers. The president’s goal is to increase visa processing capacity in China and Brazil by 40% in the next year, to ensure 80% of nonimmigrant visa applicants are interviewed within three weeks of applying and to expand the Visa Waiver Program and reciprocal recognition efforts like the Global Entry program.

All of that can be done with very little cost and without jeopardizing the security of this country. It’s a win-win situation, and one hotel leaders have been shouting about for years. It’s about time. Let’s hope the president and his task force can get the job done, because there are plenty of rooms available, as well as people looking for work.

Next week’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit will provide the hotel industry with a good early barometer to the outlook for the business in 2012. And, as it is at most industry conferences, it won’t necessarily be what is said on the podium of various general sessions and breakout discussions that will be important. The real mood of the conference (and the industry) will be divined in the thousands of conversations held in three days in the hallways, hospitality suites, bars, restaurants and coffee shops of the host hotel, the JW Marriott at LA Live.

Everyone going to next week’s ALIS wants to be optimistic, but nearly everyone will approach the meeting with at least a few nagging doubts in their minds: Where is the economy headed? What will be the end game in the European financial crisis and how will that affect the U.S. and our tourism industry? Who will win the presidential election in November, and how will that change the economic outlook? Obviously, ALIS won’t produce any clear-cut answers to these questions and others, but most attendees will walk away from the meeting feeling either good or bad about what’s ahead.

ALIS conference chairman Jim Burba and his crew seem to have an optimistic outlook. Last summer, the ALIS planning committee met in Dallas to design the 2012 program. At that meeting, Burba said the conference theme was “Rebound.” However, he wasn’t sure whether Rebound should be followed by a question mark or an exclamation mark. Apparently, optimism won over, as the official conference collateral material boldly shouts the theme as “Rebound!”. That may be an unscientific indicator, but it shows some in the industry believe 2012 will be even a better year than was 2011, which was pretty good.

Naturally, this year’s ALIS has its share of star-power speakers (Bill Marriott, Sam Zell, Donald Trump), but there are a few less star-studded sessions that should provide a good sense of where the business is headed. A pair of panel discussions on Tuesday—one with private equity fund executives and the other with leaders from hotel REITs—will be a good barometer of who’s buying what in the coming year. And the final session of the conference, the annual scrum among members of IREFAC, will probably produce a lively, often-humorous, but only occasionally definitive outlook for the hotel investment climate.

Given last week’s announcement of Room Key, the six-brand online booking consortium, distribution, revenue management and social media will be another hot topic at ALIS.

This year’s ALIS is on track to have the second-largest number of attendees since 2007, which set the attendance record for the 11-year run of the event. For more information or to register, go to the ALIS website.

The fact the six founding partners of Room Key are going to be directing an equal proportion of consumers from THEIR booking websites to Roomkey.com showing five of their biggest competitors’ offerings tells you plenty about how important this venture is to them. The fact Marriott, Hilton, Wyndham, Choice, IHG and Hyatt all got together in the same room and wrote significant checks to make this happen tells you how much they want to decrease their reliance on OTAs. (Check out a full story on what Room Key is, and how it will work.)

Sure, it’s not just about that, but there’s little doubt that is the driving force behind this. Over the past year and longer it has been hard not to see the writing on the wall, as one brand company executive after another talked about how they had to wean themselves and their franchisees from relying on bookings from the Expedias of the world and especially from costlier opaque channels like Priceline.

Let’s be clear, those channels aren’t going away, and hoteliers understand that. But as demand continues to increase, the focus has to be on maximizing revenue through the most profitable channels. And besides someone walking in the front door and booking a room at check-in, the brand.com site is about the easiest and most lucrative option available.

Room Key was created to provide consumers with an OTA-like shopping experience that directs them to the brand.com site for booking the same and best price they’d find anywhere else. Most of the hotel companies have spent the better part of recent years working on lowest-rate guarantees that have resulted in rate parity no matter what channel a traveler books through.

The key to Room Key’s success will be getting the entire universe of hotels to offer shoppers, who by definition like to shop by comparing prices and offerings. Sure, the current inventory will draw some consumers, but to really move the needle and draw a share of business from powerhouses like Expedia, Room Key must have all the branded properties and even the independents, especially in markets like San Francisco, South Beach, New York and Las Vegas.

Can that happen? Time will tell, but launching with six of the heavyweights and then adding Best Western a day later is a great start. Adding the Starwood and Carlsons of the lodging world, and the economy brands mostly absent now, like Americas Best Value Inn, Magnuson, Motel 6 and Red Roof, will give customers a reason to shop on Room Key.

Here’s some unsolicited advice for any of the candidates running for President this year. When the topic comes around to creating more jobs—and in my mind that should be the signature issue of the entire campaign—a smart candidate will veer the conversation away from foolhardy promises of recreating the nation’s once-vast manufacturing base. Instead, he should utter one word as his antidote for our ailing economy: tourism.

All he needs to do to prove the point is to cite the data from the Department of Commerce, as was trumpeted in a recent Office of Travel & Tourism Industries press release. In the third quarter of 2011, travel and tourism-related employment rose by an annual rate of 1.4%. That followed a 2.4% increase in the second quarter. By contrast, total U.S. non-farm employment rose an anemic 0.9% in the third quarter. No one can argue with the impact of those numbers.

So instead of trying to pretend we can lure long-gone manufacturing jobs back home, the next president should mount a full-court press to support the travel industry in any way his administration can, as long as the result is more foreign visitors coming to the U.S. and more jobs created to serve those people of the world who can’t wait to come to America to see everything from the Grand Canyon to Disney World to Main Street USA. First on the agenda must be repair of the broken visa system. There are literally tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of middle-class Chinese, Indians, Brazilians and others willing and able to hop on a plane to the U.S., stay a week to 10 days in our hotels, spend thousands of dollars in restaurants, shops and at attractions. They just need a fast, efficient and secure way to apply for and receive visas.

And while the Travel Promotion Act created an infrastructure that allows the federal government to partner with the private sector to market the U.S. as a tourism destination, the country still needs a cabinet-level secretary to make sure the government is doing all that it can to help tourism-related businesses attract and serve an increasing number of foreign tourists.

Promoting additional visitations to the U.S. comes with another benefit beyond economics. The more people who come to America, visit its sites, see its abundance and, most importantly, get to know its people, the more likely they’ll return home with a favorable impression of America and its people. Travel and face-to-face interaction may be the most potent peacemaking tool.

The global hotel transaction volume forecast from Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels on Thursday was for $30 billion, the same total reached last year. The global hotel investment services firm said volume would “hold steady.” Yes, by definition that means deals will be flat, a year without any growth, but describing it in those terms makes it seem just OK.

But I think that’s selling the total and the year the industry saw in 2011 short. Considering where lodging has been the last three years, a 13% increase over 2010’s rebound from the decades-worst $9.8 billion in 2009 is significant. Last year was marked by ups and downs, but operating fundamentals improved almost every month and values and transaction volume rose as well.

The biggest question mark was and remains the capital markets, but a sovereign debt crisis and the S&P’s downgrading of U.S. debt didn’t completely derail deal activity.

If I was (still) a betting man and the projection was the total and I had to choose over or under, I’d say over without hesitation. I think $30 billion would be another strong year, but I think it will be even better.

Sure, there will be continued concerns over the global economy, but there were this year and the industry didn’t fall apart. There’s more distress looming, more credit coming and revenues continue to improve — a recipe I think adds up to more deals. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a few large portfolio sales and even a brand changing hands.

If you haven’t decided on a New Year’s resolution yet, here’s one to consider. By all accounts, 2012 will be a good and perhaps great year for the hotel industry. You’ve heard it before: Business travelers are back, leisure guests never left, no new hotels are being built and the economy is limping slowly back to recovery. That should produce a year in which occupancies rise, rates continue to climb back and hotel owners realize a few more bucks of profit. Halleluiah!

This kind of positive turn of events can lead to a little greed and overreach by owners and operators. While it’s been a tough four-plus years since the economy fell apart, and many bottom lines shrunk nearly to non-existence, it’s not the time to treat your guests with anything but respect. That should be your resolution for the new year: no gouging, price manipulation, strong-arm tactics or any other practices that do anything but make your customers feel good about your hotel(s) and the lodging industry in general.

As you may have heard, starting on January 26, a new federal rule requires airlines to quote the full price of airline tickets in their advertising. That means, the advertised prices must include all non-optional fees and taxes, including fuel charges and the 9/11 security fee. Not surprisingly, most airlines are opposing the new rule as “arbitrary and capricious,” but it’s probably a losing battle and one the airline industry (one of the least-trusted businesses in the country) shouldn’t wage.

The lesson for the lodging industry is that hotels need to stop rate creep through the obnoxious trend toward so-called “resort” or “energy” fees. While hoteliers say the practice helps them compete more easily in tough markets, the actual effect of these often-hidden fees is to turn off existing customers and anyone else thinking of traveling more in the coming year. According to news reports, one resort in Florida even told a guest that its resort fee is required by state law, which it’s not.

2012 promises to be a good year for most of you, but that’s not a slam dunk. Macroeconomic factors outside of your control could easily sour the U.S. economy and jeopardize lodging’s solid recovery. It’s time to resolve to respect your guests in all dealings with them. Don’t become a hated industry, like the airlines.

Last year at this time, I wrote 2010 was better than 2009 (duh!) and hopefully we could say the same again this year. I think it’s safe to say we can. Although maybe 2011 wasn’t as prosperous as we’d hoped, it’s hard to complain about another year of improvement (check out the year’s top 10 stories here).

Especially if you consider all the challenges the industry has faced, from unemployment and a crisis in consumer confidence, to the ongoing political gridlock that is Washington DC to our own debt-ceiling fiasco here and then the European sovereign debt crisis plaguing the world economy.

I guess the moral of all those story lines is the lodging industry has remained strong, and is perhaps stronger than many thought. Maybe the industry isn’t as tied to the economy and GDP growth as we thought and/or maybe Americans really do believe traveling is a birthright that trumps almost everything else. Who knows, but the fact the economy has continued to teeter while the industry continues to improve is what I’ll take away from 2011.

Sure, there are still many concerns over what might happen if there’s another unforeseen blow to the world economy and about the lack of credit combined with either a trickle or tidal wave of CMBS defaults that loom depending on whom you ask. Those are all pretty large elephants still in the room, but they’ve been there for more than a year now and the industry hasn’t been trampled yet.

My hope for 2012 is we can stop discussing where we’re at in the recovery or recession and whether we’re rebounding (? or !). Let’s retire those terms until we’re at the end of this cycle, which is finally here, and let’s enjoy the climb back up and a return to normalcy.

I got a press release last month from NewYorkHotels.org, an online booking service, trumpeting the fact that 73% of visitors to New York City said in a survey they were happy with their hotel stays. That’s an alarming statistic and should be a major call to action for every lodging property in New York and everywhere. Is that the best the hotel industry can do?

According to the survey, 13% of those surveyed gave their hotels a negative rating, and the remaining 14% of the group were neutral about their stays, which to me is as damning as the percentage of people who had a bad experience. If this is the standard the hotel industry collectively believes is acceptable, then every owner and operator needs to reevaluate his or her operation. No business can afford to have one out of four customers unhappy with the product or service they receive. When compared to other sectors of the hospitality industry, hotels should shine in the eyes of consumers: Everyone hates the airlines and the air travel experience; car rental is a commodity buy that provides no sizzle to the customer; timeshare will struggle until the economy gets healthy; and too many people can’t afford or are afraid of the cruise ship experience.

However, hotels should be a place of refuge, romance, fun, comfort, efficiency and exhilaration depending on why a guest is checking in. And, in fact, even a business traveler can be exhilarated by his or her stay at a hotel, and leisure guests, while primarily seeking romance and fun, also want their stays to be efficient and hassle free. Anything less should be unacceptable to anyone who owns, operates or works in a hotel.

This seemingly low standard of acceptable satisfaction reminds me of a story about J. Willard Marriott, Sr., the founder of Marriott who initially resisted his son Bill’s desire to get into the hotel business. Once the company built and opened the Key Bridge Marriott in suburban Washington, DC in the late 1950s, Bill and the group of hotel pros he hired to help start the lodging business went to JW Sr.’s office with the good news that the Key Bridge property hit 90% occupancy. Instead of the expected response (such as atta boy!), Marriott Sr. wanted to know why the hotel hot shots couldn’t fill up the remaining 10% of the rooms.

The same is true of guest satisfaction. No hotelier should be happy or stop trying to improve until 100% of guests say they’re happy, thrilled, overwhelmed, bowled-over and utterly satisfied with their stays. It’s a job that never ends.