As the CEO of a public company, HEI Hotels, Gary Mendell pursues a growth strategy that differs from public companies.

Like most other speakers and attendees at this week’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit, the big dogs of hotel financing were enthusiastic about the next couple of years. The final session at ALIS brought together eight members of IREFAC, the industry’s top investment and financing think tank, and their consensus was for a bright future for lenders, borrowers and owners.

“We’re right to be bullish,” said Four Seasons Hotels President and CEO Kathleen Taylor. “We have huge momentum, both domestically and globally, both through the sheer growth in our existing business and the additional opportunities we see for new development or conversions in emerging markets.”

The panelists were in awe of the speed of the recovery, a trend that has been recognized by investors in REIT and hotel company C-corp stocks, the share prices of which have risen between 30 and 40 percent in the past year.

“These investors may be a little ahead of the curve, but they see the future correctly,” said Mike Shannon, managing director of KSL Capital Partners. “In an era in which the alternatives are low-yield investments, public equity, including hotel stocks, looks pretty good right now.”

While public companies have been very active in hotel acquisitions, a thawing of the debt markets should make it more viable for private companies looking to make transactions. One panelist, Gary Mendell, chairman and CEO of HEI Hotels & Resorts, a private firm, employs a strategy that veers from the focus of most public companies.

“Since they’re mostly looking at center cities in the top 10 major markets, we’re sellers of assets in those markets and are moving into secondary, but still major markets—cities like Atlanta and others in California and Florida—where the REITs are less focused at this time,” said Mendell. Bidding against a public company can be daunting, he said, citing a recent deal in which HEI bid $102 million for an asset that a public company ultimately bid and won for about $120 million.

The panel generally agreed lenders are becoming less likely to extend or modify loans for hotel assets that may be in distress, although as Michael Murphy, head of hospitality and leisure capital at First Fidelity, said a loan backed by a good sponsor with a strong relationship to the lender has a better chance of extension. “And as it turns out, banks have been rewarded by the slowness in acting as valuations on assets are creeping back up.”

Mendell had an even simpler formula to explain lender behavior: “We’ve been successful in extending debt if the asset is worth less than the debt on it. However, if the asset is worth more than the debt, it’s more likely the lender wants us to sell.”

Jackson Hsieh, vice chairman of UBS, believes (as did many other ALIS speakers) the CMBS market for hotel financing will roar back in 2011. He said his firm issued no CMBS loans in 2009 but did about $1.2 billion in the past year, nearly all in the past 60 days. “We expect Wall Street will do about $30 billion this year. What the market really needs, however, is floating-rate CMBS, which I think will develop later in the year,” said Hsieh.

Despite the upturn in hotel performance and a loosening of the lending markets, financing for new construction is not yet widely available, said the panel. “If you’re a lender and you can make conservative loans on existing product as values are coming off the bottom, why would you take a risk on new construction?“ asked Mark Elliott, senior managing director of Hodges Ward Elliott.

Murphy offered up a telling example of the problems in obtaining financing for new hotel construction. His firm worked with a potential borrower with high net worth and willing to take a non-recourse loan for a project that had a top brand, in a good market with excellent management.

“We were confident we could get it done, but we went to more than 70 sources of capital over an extended period of time and flogged the deal in every way possible,” he said. “The reaction of most lenders to a hospitality construction deal like this was as though we reached in our pocket and put a rat on the table.”

Like all prudent business people, the panelists see potential risks on the horizon for the industry and the financing environment. Four Seasons’ Taylor echoed several panelists with her concern over global issues, particularly continued economic uncertainties. “Any upset in the world—economies, terrorism, drug wars, whatever—affects our industry,” she said. “On the positive side, a recovery in global economies will provide strong tailwinds for brands like mine that are trying to expand internationally.”

KSL’s Shannon is more concerned about possible rises in interest rates and inflation. “Inflation will be back, and employees who didn’t get raises in the last couple of years will see our revenues increasing and they’ll want a piece of it,” said Shannon. “The challenge will be controlling these and all other costs.”

Despite the concerns, the panelists are still extremely bullish on the long-term investment outlook for the hospitality sector of commercial real estate because of the industry’s unique attributes.

“Travel and tourism is a very resilient business and it continues to grow in consumer share of wallet,” said Shannon. “And private equity is a great model in this industry for those patient investors who are willing to look out 10 to 15 years and are willing to bet on that fundamental resiliency of travel and leisure.”