"New York City's hospitality industry is ......... fire," the global chairman of brokerage services at CB Richard Ellis, Stephen Siegel, said, "People from around the world want to visit New York and of course, they all need places to stay."

Supply cannot meet the demand which has been created by ......... more than 41 million visitors to the city in 2006.

According to industry leaders, 44 million visitors — a record number — are expected this year, helping to ......... the hospitality fire.

Owners and operators in the hospitality ......... are saying they have not experienced such impressive cash flow, hotel property selling prices, and availability of financing for close to a decade.

Even after several years of ......... growth, real estate experts say the market is improving so far in 2007.

"Occupancy levels have been close to capacity for the second year in a row, and room rates had another year of double-......... growth," the president of Lodging Advisors, Sean Hennessey, said.

In ......... of this, more and more people assume the pace of improvement must moderate; and yet, for the first quarter of 2007, occupancy is up about 1 percentage point over last year, and room rates are up 12%.

The Manhattan hotel market is ......... hot, with demand for hotel rooms far outstripping supply.

During the past several years, several thousand hotel rooms have been lost from the city's inventory due to the ......... of existing hotels to residential use.

As the New York lodging market continues to experience increases in average rates, and as the robust residential market slows down a bit, we are now seeing that hotel economics begin to ......... out the feasibility of new hotel development.