Arizona

• Five years in the making, the newly expanded Phoenix Convention Center offers nearly 900,000 square feet of exhibition and meeting space encompassing 97 meeting rooms, three ballrooms, and a food court. The largest exhibition hall offers 312,500 square feet of space.

• The new Sheraton Phoenix Downtown offers 1,000 guest rooms and a conference center with more than 80,000 square feet of meeting space.

• On the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community near Phoenix, Talking Stick Resort & Spa will open in early 2010 with 497 rooms and 100,000 square feet of meeting and event space.

• Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix recently marked its 80th anniversary with the debut of Ocatilla, a 120-room, three-story addition that brought guest room count to 738.

• The 732-room Westin Kierland Resort & Spa recently unveiled two new outdoor function spaces, adding a combined 8,000 square feet to the Scottsdale resort's existing 175,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor meeting and event space.

• The Ritz-Carlton, Paradise Valley, with 225 guest rooms on 105 acres at the base of Phoenix's Camelback Mountain, is scheduled to open in 2010.

• In Scottsdale, the 453-room Camelback Inn, A JW Marriott Resort & Spa, completed a $50 million renovation last September.

• The 128-room Omni Tucson National Resort has completed a $30 million renovation.

• Twenty miles northwest of Tucson, The Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain is under construction and scheduled to open December 18. It will offer 250 guest rooms, a spa, restaurants, five meeting rooms, three ballrooms, and two Jack Nicklaus Signature golf courses.

California

• After a $90 million renovation, Ojai Valley Inn & Spa, on California's central coast in Ojai, now has 308 rooms and suites, and new ballrooms and meeting spaces. The golf course has been reconfigured and the pro shop expanded.

New Mexico

• Albuquerque's Andaluz Hotel, formerly the La Posada de Albuquerque, will reopen in fall 2009 following a $30 million renovation. The Silver LEED-certified property will offer 107 guest rooms and 6,000 square feet of meeting and event space.

Nevada

• The $1.4 billion Encore at Wynn Las Vegas made its debut in December 2008 with 2,034 guest rooms, 60,000 square feet of meeting space, a casino, spa, pool, and five restaurants.

• Caesars Palace topped off a 23-story tower as part of a $1 billion expansion. The Las Vegas resort's sixth tower adds 665 hotel rooms to the property and is located next to a new 263,000-square-foot meeting and convention center.

• The Palazzo opened in 2008 with 3,000 all-suite guest rooms near The Venetian hotel and the Sands Expo and Convention Center.

• MGM Mirage's City Center in Las Vegas, a $9.2 billion “urban metropolis” encompassing 18 million square feet of hotels, residences, and amenities, plans to open three hotels by year's end. The 400-room Mandarin Oriental; Vdara, a 57-story condo hotel; and the 4,000-room ARIA Resort & Casino are scheduled to open late this year.