Bloomberg has a story on Seattle’s hotel building boom:

Seattle, the fastest-growing among the top 50 U.S. cities, is attracting a wave of development as employers such as Amazon.com Inc. expand and lodging occupancies reach records. Three hotels opened in 2013 and two were completed early this year, while almost a dozen have been proposed in or near the central business district, according to a report by local commercial real estate broker Kidder Mathews.

“Seattle is among the top three office markets in the U.S., next to San Francisco and New York,” Douglas Howe, Touchstone’s president, said in a telephone interview. “There is a strong need for business-hotel hospitality.” . . .

Hotel occupancies in Seattle climbed to 73 percent in the first six months of 2014 from 69 percent in the first half of last year, while the average nightly rate jumped 6.1 percent to $128.09, according to Hendersonville, Tennessee-based research company STR Inc. That compares with occupancies of 64 percent and average room rates of $114.06 nationwide.

“Strong occupancy and rising rates have made Seattle a high-profile target for hotel developers,” Kidder Mathews said in its second-quarter report. The central business district and South Lake Union, where Amazon is based, are two areas of particular interest, the firm said. . . .

The “most ambitious” plan is a 1,680-room convention hotel with 160 apartments, restaurants and retail space on a block occupied by the former Greyhound bus station, according to Kidder Mathews. The project, awaiting permits, would be the biggest hotel ever in Seattle, the firm said. The developer is R.C. Hedreen Co., founded by veteran hotel developer Richard Hedreen.

The Hedreen hotel would help Seattle book more conventions. As a Seattle Times story from June notes,

The 1,236-room Seattle Sheraton currently offers the most rooms and the largest contiguous meeting space among downtown’s hotels.

The two 35,000-square-foot meeting rooms planned in Hedreen’s 9th & Stewart project are more than twice the size of those at the Sheraton and the Westin.

The city loses out on an estimated $760 million in convention and event business each year because groups can’t get the dates or meeting space they need, according to Visit Seattle, a local nonprofit marketing group funded by the hotel occupancy tax.

For the Hedreen project to work, the city must give up a public alley. The city is doing a study of the project’s environmental impact, and the developer has warned that repeated delays could jeopardize the inclusion of affordable apartments in the project.

The Kidder Mathews report linked to by Bloomberg has interesting numbers and commentary on hotel activity across the state.