The economy is humming along, unemployment is low, spending is relatively strong and people are hitting the roads in increasing numbers on vacations across the region and country.

So with the arrival of Memorial Day and the unofficial start of the summer season, hotel industry officials should be thriving and making plans for new and better hotels, especially on Cape Cod, one of the most famous and beloved vacation destinations in the nation, right?

Not exactly.

While the hotel industry in other parts of the country may be experiencing varying degrees of recovery, the Cape hotel sector continues at its relatively plodding pace, with little new construction and a consensus that not much will change in coming years.

The reasons for the now decades-long new construction stagnation: the Cape’s high “barriers to entry,” including the high cost of land, stiff competition from the home rental market, tough zoning and permitting rules, lack of a strong off-season business travel market and, most recently, the rise of Airbnb and other middleman home rental companies.

The bottom line: There’s simply no rush to build new hotels on the Cape.

“It’s just a difficult market,” said Bill Catania, owner and president of Catania Hospitality, which owns the 244-room Cape Codder Resort in Hyannis, the 48-room Daniel Webster Inn in Sandwich and four Hearth ’n Kettle restaurants on the South Shore and Cape. “It’s challenging to build (on the Cape) and I don’t see that changing much over the years.”

To be clear: current Cape hoteliers are largely doing fine. Following the recent recession, hotel occupancy and room rates have fully recovered and continue to rise at moderate rates, according to tourism data.

Existing Properties Add Amenities

Several Cape hotels have recently embarked on major renovations and even room expansions, adding new amenities to make their properties more competitive and attractive to tourists.

Catania’s Cape Codder Resort last year, for instance, opened a new 20,000-square-foot indoor waterpark, as part of an attempt to boost off-season business and nab summer travelers when the weather isn’t cooperating.

Wendy Northcross, CEO of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, notes that a number of other Cape hotels, such as the Crowne Pointe Historic Inn in Provincetown, have added spas and other amenities to attract travelers.

Meanwhile, other hotel owners have launched ambitious renovation and expansion projects – sometimes knocking down older hotels and building new facilities on the same sites. Last year, Simon Konover Co. replaced a former 99-room Days Inn with a new 128-room Fairfield Inn & Suites in Hyannis.

And many existing hotels are being snapped up by investors, such as Delaware North’s $26.3 million purchase last year of the 266-room SeaCrest Beach Hotel in North Falmouth. Delaware North, the giant hospitality and food-service company, is most famous in these parts for its ownership of TD Garden and the Boston Bruins.

But what makes the acquisition of current hotel facilities on the Cape attractive for investors are the very same factors that make it hard to build new hotels on the Cape: The area’s high barriers to entry that keep out new entrants and provide current owners with a protected market against new hotel rivals.

One casualty of the Cape’s high barriers-to-entry obstacle was Falmouth Hospitality LLC, which recently tried to build a new SpringHill Suites Marriott in downtown Falmouth, only to see its proposal run into a buzzsaw of opposition from nearby residents and zoning officials. The plan has since been withdrawn.

Mike Kasparian, president of the Falmouth Chamber of Commerce, said the rejection of SpringHill Suites was a disappointment.

“We have a need for more hotel rooms,” he said, without giving an exact number. “We could use some more. Not a lot. But we need some more.”

But Jeff Talmadge, CEO of WeNeedaVacation.com, the Cape’s highly popular online home-rental advertising site, said he just doesn’t see much of a demand for new hotels.

Home-rental bookings on the Cape have risen by about 10 percent since 2014 and are expected to rise by a modest 1 percent this year. All the while the supply of home rentals keeps rising, the result of more condos available for rent, he said.

Unless more businesses locate to the Cape – and with them an increase in business-travel demand – there’s no strong need for new hotels, he said.

On top of the traditionally strong home-rental market on the Cape, companies such as Airbnb are also starting to eat into the hotel market, particularly with international travelers, Cape officials say.