Europe and the US have started to become used to no frills airlines, and the trend is on the up in Asia as well, with new no frills airlines in South East Asia and Australia. Now the trend is moving to the hospitality and hotel industry in the US, and we should expect it to hit Asia soon.

Eurekalert is reporting that Hotels with fewer frills may be lodging industry's darlings in 2003

Extract: As flashy, upscale hotel properties from the "Decade of Greed" in the 1980s slide into obsolescence, and post-Sept. 11 changes in hotel occupancy trends run their course, midscale hotels without food and beverage services--the rising darlings of the U.S. lodging industry since the more austere 1990s--will become more valuable per room than their full-service sister operations, predicts a study from Penn State and HVS International.

It may just be a bit too early to predict that an Age of Austerity is dawning in the West, though there are several indications, especially as creasing fallout from the excesses of the last decade become more apparant daily. It is even more presumptuous to predict the same for Asia, where "face" sometimes seem almost self-fullfilling.

A cautious man however, would be wary of investing in the luxury hotel sector. Boutique hotels have been slow to catch on in Asia, especially in countries where luxury hotel room rates are comparatively low. But a momentum is growing in places like Singapore, and there is increasing demand in Seoul, where hotel room rates are amongst the highest world wide.