As the hotel industry continues on its way to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, Marriott International is working closely with owners to control costs and guide new construction.

Liam Brown, group president for the U.S. and Canada at Marriott, said in a video interview with Hotel News Now that no one had a playbook on how to handle a "100-year pandemic," so the company had to create one on its own. Marriott’s teams have been vital to the company’s recovery and are focused on helping owners to get a handle on expenses and maximize profitability.

For more on how Marriott has handled COVID-19 and worked with franchisees, watch the video above.

In Marriott’s first quarter 2021 earnings release, the company reported its worldwide development pipeline totaled more than 2,800 properties and approximately 491,000 rooms. Of those, 18,000 rooms were approved but not subject to signed contracts. More than 222,000 rooms in the pipeline were under construction by the end of the quarter.

Marriott’s development pipeline remains strong, and the pace of signings has picked up this year and is above where it was a year ago at this time, Brown said. The current environment has made the company’s conversion-friendly brands more attractive to owners than before, he added.

The company added 23,500 rooms globally during the first quarter, 7,300 of which were conversion rooms.

Marriott has a rich platform of conversion brands, Brown said, naming Delta, Four Points by Sheraton, the Autograph Collection and Tribute Portfolio.

“We’re definitely seeing an uptick in conversations about conversions, particularly from independents, hotels with weaker brands or hotels with expiring or terminable agreements,” he said.

Brown said he was excited about a few other brand projects Marriott started before the onset of the pandemic. The company has been working on smaller prototypes of its Fairfield Inn & Suites and TownePlace Suites brands. These brands will focus on secondary and tertiary markets.

The coronavirus pandemic created new obstacles for hotel owners and developers, delaying construction projects and openings. The full extent of the pandemic’s effects on hotel development won’t be seen for years.

Overall developer sentiment for Marriott’s brands remains strong, Brown said. One-third of Marriott’s pipeline is in the United States and Canada, and the hotels currently under construction will open over the next several years.

Developers today are making decisions that will determine supply growth over the next two to three years, he said. They’re deciding now whether to start developing or wait a bit.

“We've carefully analyzed the rooms in our pipeline using current estimates for construction cycles across all the different brands, and we really don't see any large gap in rooms growth on the horizon,” Brown said.

Adding the caveat that it is too soon to predict what will happen several years out from now, he said the number of openings and signings this year is encouraging.

One headwind to new development is that it’s meaningfully more difficult now to secure construction financing, Brown said. The lending market for existing hotels is much better compared to new builds because there is a performing asset.

It’s slightly improving each day, and there’s a belief that will loosen up in the second half of 2021, he said.

In a separate interview at the 2021 Hunter Hotel Investment Conference, Noah Silverman, global development officer for the U.S. and Canada at Marriott, told HNN that developers his company has worked with before are interested in building more.

"The challenges now are well-known — the availability of financing and construction costs — but these developers are prepared to take those challenges on," he said. "There are still deals getting financed.”

The company still feels great about the share of deals coming out of Canada, Silverman added.

"Not surprisingly, it’s more difficult now," he said. "Canada is behind the U.S. in terms of the recovery curve — it feels there more like it felt here last year. The [U.S.-Canada] border being closed isn’t helping.”

Marriott is excited about the further blending of business and leisure travel, Brown said. Many guests have stayed at Marriott’s hotels for work and then spent time by the pool or at the beach and scheduled other activities to get away from all things related to the pandemic.

This trend of bleisure travel will be reinforced by the trend toward more flexible work environments, he said.

“It behooves any brand company to continue to understand consumer sentiment and psychology and what might be permanent in terms of their thinking around travelers' desires,” he said.

Hoteliers will need to understand guests’ ongoing need for cleanliness and see how that evolves and changes, he said. They will also need to figure out if travelers will define safety differently or whether they are comfortable with different kinds of experiences, services or types of travel in the future.

The innovation of digital and contactless technology has accelerated over the last 12 months, Brown said. Mobile check-in, requests and keys help create a more powerful guest experience and provide more personalization by giving guests what they want, when and how they want it.

There has been a lot of creativity in the meeting space coming out of the recovery, he said. That will continue and reinforce the notion of safety protocols. Marriott’s Connect with Confidence initiative provides best practices and resources to meeting planners to help attendees feel safe when meeting and further encourage the return to in-person group meetings.

“At the end of the day, while the environment we are in is different, there's no doubt that our commitment and our values continue to be the same,” he said.

HNN Editorial Director Stephanie Ricca contributed to this article.