The American Hospitality & Lodging Association estimates that there were 1.04 billion hotel room nights sold in the United States in 2006. That number has been steadily increasing at about a 3% rate for the past four years, and the average room rate has been increasing even faster. That has led to a boom in hotel construction. Reed Construction Data estimated in October 2006 that the value of hotel construction was up 102% at year to date over 2005, and that followed a jump of 22% in 2005.

“Hotel construction has been hot for the last several years,” says Marc Landry with American Hospitality Development Company, Bristol, R.I. “There's a lot of high-end resort stuff that never really cooled off and there is a lot of 'focused-service‘ construction—that is, hotels that are less than full service, such as Spring Hill Suites or Holiday Inn Express.” And, of course, there continues to be hotel construction in urban areas across the country and in Las Vegas, where several mega projects are underway.

Although concrete has been a primary material in hotels for many years, there has been a shift toward newer techniques, especially for mid-rise hotels. Hotel construction today often uses tilt-up concrete and insulating concrete forms.

“There are several ways used in New England,” says Landry. “Because concrete and structural steel got more expensive, there are some developers that went to wood construction. We don't do that, and I'm not in a hurry to go there. It's a different kind of owner, one with a different timeline for holding the property. Block and plank is very popular here, but I just finished a 72,000-square-foot project this past summer that was CMU walls and cast-in-place decks—a four-story hotel with 360 yards of concrete for each slab.”

ICFs also are becoming popular for hotel construction—a method that until recently was restricted to low-rise, mostly residential applications. “We see more ICFs being used for hotel construction,” says Joe Lake, president of Eco-Block. “I think it is an optimal application for a variety of reasons. The first is, of course, energy conservation. But beyond that a lot of hotels are being built near freeways where there's 24-hour noise that can infiltrate a typical frame structure. ICFs control the sound within a structure to provide a more enjoyable space—particularly in the extended stay type of hotels.”

Lake sees the best market in the three- to five-story hotels, where there is currently a lot of growth. And he notes that today there are more contractors with the expertise to build that size of a building with ICFs. “I think that the installers and contractors who are experienced and good at it can be very efficient and competitive with other wall systems. The guy who's trying to tackle something like this early in his career might not be successful, but today there are many fine contractors across the country who have the capability to do higher level work with ICFs,” says Lake.

Joe Lyman, executive director of the Insulating Concrete Forms Association sees ICFs being used mostly by the franchisees for the national chains—since it will be their building, they are willing to spend a little extra to get the energy efficiency. He also notes that ICF construction can be less intrusive. “A convention center that was being added onto a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Florida had intended to use tilt-up, but went with ICFs because they felt it would cause less disruption,” he says.

Tilt-up is another construction technique that is gaining market share in hotel construction. “Hotels are becoming a very attractive market for tilt-up,” says Jim Baty, technical director of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association (TCA). “For example, Red Roof Inn joined the TCA in the past year since they feel tilt-up offers them perhaps the best potential for efficiency and construction cost control. And, there have been a handful of hotels completed in the last two years in Florida using tilt-up.”

Despite the growing use of alternative construction techniques, traditional concrete construction hasn't gone away in hotel construction. As major renovation neared completion on the Denver Convention Center in 2004, Hyatt broke ground across the street on an 1100-room, 38-story hotel. With an all-concrete frame, builder Hensel Phelps Construction, Greeley, Colo., faced a tight site that created lots of problems in just moving formwork so that they would have room to maneuver. “A lot of the work was just material handling,” says superintendent Robert Berry. “About 70% of our accidents were back strains from moving things around the site. The biggest challenge was staying organized. It's always all about organization.”

Hensel Phelps used various form-work systems for the project: PERI forms for columns and beams, Forming Concepts self-climbing forms for elevator shafts and stairwells, and Meva's MevaDec with the plastic composite Alkus panels for the floors. “We like using the Meva forms for the decks because there are so few parts and pieces versus frame and brace systems,” says Berry. The decks are 9-inch-thick post-tensioned flat plates. Pours were from 12,000 to 18,000 square feet and workers applied half the post-tensioning stress in 24 hours, after the concrete reached 1500 psi compressive strength. Full stressing was done at 48 hours when the concrete reached 3600 psi, 80% of its ultimate strength.