The number of guestrooms in the U.S. hotel construction pipeline continues to dwindle. According to Smith Travel Research, the total active pipeline includes 4,690 properties with 501,476 rooms. The room total is down about four percent from May and off nearly 25 percent from June 2008.

Perhaps the most striking news from the report is that 56,000 fewer hotel rooms are under construction today than a year ago.

Inexplicably, the hotel construction pipeline in Canada is on the upswing. According to STR, 223 projects with 26,172 rooms are in some stage of development up north. That’s up nearly seven percent over May and six percent over June 2008. However, the number of rooms under construction (6,963) is down nearly five percent over this time last year.