If you’re like me, you’re starting to get the feeling the recession is winding down and better economic days are ahead. While the economy will slowly begin to improve, it will probably experience a few hiccups, surprises and setbacks before we’re solidly back on easy street. While history has shown the hotel business typically lagging behind any recovery by at least a couple of quarters, this time it will probably take longer—perhaps a lot longer—for the travel engine to fully crank back up.

Consumers are bound to be skittish for a while, and business travel—particularly at the high end—will surely return very slowly and tentatively. A real possibility exists that travel may never return with the same intensity that we enjoyed in the past.

With that scenario in mind, lodging owners, operators, developers and marketers need to approach the recovery with a mixture of caution and innovation. Here are a few thoughts on how to best negotiate the perils of the impending recovery:

Value will be king. Businesses, in particular, won’t be able to flaunt luxury travel for a long time to come. The AIG Effect and the anti-business sentiment that swirled around the financial meltdown will keep businesses and business travelers in a defensive mode for many months and probably years to come. Group houses with the words “resort” or “spa” in their names will be particularly vulnerable, as will markets like Las Vegas, Mexico and the Caribbean.

To keep competitive, it will pay to add value wherever and whenever possible. I recently stayed at a boutique hotel in Puerto Rico that now offers free continental breakfast and drinks from 5 to 6 p.m. nightly. The perception of that value by the guest far exceeds the cost to the hotel. There are countless other ways to add value to a customer’s stay that don’t necessarily add any or much cost. Test your ideas until you find the ones that work.

Bring back staff, but not too fast. The trickiest post-recession decisions you will be forced to make involve staffing. When the downturn hit, most operators looked at payroll as the quickest, if not easiest, way to cut costs and survive the recession. Some hotels cut too deeply and probably lost business because of it. Others didn’t reduce head count enough and took hits on the bottom line.

Rehiring staff in the proper doses is a delicate exercise, one that requires you to balance improving business conditions with the need to plump-up the bottom line. The key is to rehire people only as you’re sure you’ll need them. Hiring someone only to lay off him or her in a month is neither fair nor good business.

Promote, promote, promote. Marketing budgets are tight and probably won’t loosen until well after the industry is showing healthy RevPAR gains. As a result, hoteliers need to find fast, inexpensive and effective ways to sell their properties. The Internet, and particularly social media, satisfies the first two criteria, but it’s already becoming a crowded web as hotels and brands endlessly use Twitter, Facebook and other tools to spread the word about their properties. And communication without a message typically falls on deaf ears.

A better approach, but one that also uses the Internet as a communications vehicle, is to develop as many creative and enticing promotions as possible. An effective promotion obviously drives business but also generates buzz and word of mouth. As example, Motel 6 last month launched a promotion in which the chain provides free lodging for up-and-coming bands on tour. The campaign will help the brand gain some needed hipness, and it quickly generated a lot of media and Internet attention. It was simple, inexpensive and I’m sure will be effective.

Good luck as you navigate the perilous waters of the impending recovery.

Ed Watkins is editor of Lodging Hospitality. Contact him at ed.watkins@penton.com