There's no doubt about it--the lodging industry is in a full-recovery mode. After three years of frowns and disappointment, executives of companies that own and/or operate hotels are smiling again. For now, we don't have to be greatly concerned about defaults, delistings and the debacles that bankrupt companies go through.

Publicly traded hotel companies--which have long been the whipping boys of fickle Wall Street investors and analysts--are popular with investors for the time being.

There are plenty of other success stories:

* Choice Hotels International's stock price was ahead of the pack and picked up momentum a year ago and keeps threatening the $40-per-share level. "Cha-ching" to those who own stock options and to those who believed in the company when shares sold in the mid-teens after 9/11.

* Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts' stock has almost doubled in price during the last 12 months, and at press time, was close to the $60-per-share level. It still has a little way to go to reach the $80-per-share price it was trading for during the fall of 2000, but I suspect there are some robust renditions of "O Canada!" reverberating through the offices of stockholders.

* Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's stock jumped almost 10 percent during the five days following its February release of earnings and guidance. With the aid of being upgraded by several analysts, the stock is trading near $40 per share--right where it was before the economic bubble burst during early 2001.

* Even Wyndham International, which was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and sold at one point during the last year for less than two shiny dimes per share, has seen a breakthrough. It has settled in at about a buck and a quarter a share--well below the almost $30 per share it was getting during the late 1990s when it was called Patriot American, but talk of the company going bankrupt has all but ceased.

However, the best news is that it's not only stock prices that are climbing. Smith Travel Research reported that there were 71,525 rooms under construction during January--fewer than half the number that were under construction at the beginning of the downturn (March 2001). A 1-percent to 2-percent growth of supply each year for the next few years would be exactly what the industry needs to experience an economic rebound.