Inns show Promus in small towns.

• Position: Promus Hotels

Shelby, Laurinburg, Sanford and Albemarle are fine places but hardly prime locations for hotels.

Hampton Inns and its franchisees, however, like small, out-of-the-way towns. They are giving a boost to North Carolina's moribund lodging-construction market. Last year, the 10-year-old company, a division of Memphis-based Promus Hotels, opened five motels in North Carolina -- more than a third of the state's new lodging facilities.

This year, Hampton Inns plans to open six more, four in towns with fewer than 20,000 residents. One is slated for touristy Highlands, which has fewer than 1,000 permanent residents.

Keys to success, says Mickey Powell, Promus' vice president of development, are finding local financing and building hotels smaller than the typical 125-to-140-room ones in larger markets. "Three years ago, we introduced a small-town prototype, as small as 50 rooms, which fits quite nicely in a Small Business Administration loan package."

Putting up a Hampton Inn isn't cheap. Besides the $40,000 franchise fee, it costs more than $30,000 a room to build -- $1.5 million for a 50-room hotel. All but four...