The U.S. hotel development pipeline seems to be in free fall. According to new data from Smith Travel Research, the total number of rooms in the U.S. pipeline in January fell by 3.7 percent over December and by 7.3 percent over January 2008. The number of new rooms currently under construction (190,092 in January) decreased in five of seven chain scales measured by Smith Travel Research.

 First the good news: In January, two segments showed significant increases in the number of rooms in construction. The upscale segment posted a 16.0-percent rise, to 54,332 rooms in construction. Similarly, there were 63,311 midscale without food and beverage rooms under construction in January, up 17.8 percent over the same month a year earlier. By contrast, two chain scales--upper upscale and independents--each posted year-over-year decreases of more than 30 percent.

Despite the steep declines, there are still a lot of hotel rooms under development in the U.S: The total pipeline includes 5,494 projects with 590,207 rooms.