A recent story in USA Today, titled “With recession looming, high-end lodgings offer luxe for less” suggested many high-end properties are getting creative in their marketing, and in some cases, cutting rates. A story earlier this week in the New York Times, “Dim Days for Luxury Hotels” hit on the same topic.

Cutting rates, everyone says, doesn’t drive occupancy and only lowers revenue. That was the lesson learned in the last down cycle after 9/11. Owners and companies are facing the same challenge again, from top to bottom. Hotels of all shapes and sizes are getting creative with special offers and marketing gimmicks to avoid cutting rates while still attracting business: two-for-one sales, stay three nights for the price of two, gas cards, gift cards, free spa treatments, etc. Is it working? Can it work? I don’t have the answers, but I’m guessing it can’t hurt.

PKF Hospitality Research recently lowered its 2009 projections: a 4.3 percent decline in RevPAR and a 7.9 percent drop in profit. The news wasn’t quite as dire in the Travel Industry Association’s recent report on the “2009 Outlook for U.S. Travel and Tourism.” It showed the resilience of leisure travel—only a .2 percent decline in ‘08, -1.3 percent projected for next year. Business travel didn’t fare as well, with a 3.6 percent drop in ‘08 and a 2.7 percent decline projected for next year. The other key element to the report was travelers are and will continue to trade down through this slowdown. They’ll travel, but maybe only to a closer destination, cheaper hotel and/or for a shorter stay.

I’ll be heading to New York next week for the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show and I look forward to getting the pulse of the industry, as well as of the city that is home to our financial and cultural epicenters.

We shall see. And I, of course, will report back.

You could have made a lot of money in recent years by investing in either New York City hotels or timeshare development. Both of these segments of the hospitality business were thought to be, and rightly so, bulletproof to the prevailing winds blowing through the industry and the general economy. Upscale and luxury Manhattan hotels have had occupancies above 80 percent for years and rates have climbed into stratospheric regions (Have you tried to book a last-minute room in the Big Apple lately?). Likewise, the timeshare industry has posted double-digit sales growth every year for as long as anyone can remember. The vacation ownership business never even missed a beat following 9/11.

That’s all changed, and both the New York lodging community and the timeshare business are facing tough times for reasons that overlap and diverge. Manhattan occupancies in the first couple weeks of October—typically one of the biggest months—were down by more than 10 percent. To make matters worse, city government is talking about raising the room tax by as much as three percentage points to a whopping 18 percent. Likewise, timeshare tours and sales for most companies and markets have dwindled to a trickle. Westgate Resorts, one of the largest in the field, has already laid off several hundred workers and closed its Houston sales gallery.

Naturally, the economy is affecting both segments of the business. Fewer consumers, even those who considered themselves on Easy Street this time last year, have the dough to blow $900 a night on a hotel room in New York or the $20,000-plus it costs for a prime timeshare week in a branded property. In New York, the problem is compounded by the value of the dollar, which now favors Europeans less than it has for most of this decade. Add to that the near-total collapse of the financial services industry, and it’s easy to see why demand is down and will probably continue to sink in ’09.

For timeshare, the other bugaboo is the credit mess. The lock-up of the credit market hurts timeshare in two distinct and fatal ways: It’s harder for consumers to meet the tightening credit standards necessary to qualify for loans to buy vacation intervals, and timeshare companies make a lot of their money by bundling loans and selling them to third-party servicers, a business that’s nearly dried up for the time being.

Unless something drastic happens, 2009 will be tough for both New York and timeshare, but I’m confident both will rebound quickly and ahead of the rest of the hospitality industry once the general economy swings back into life.