Checked into a Baccarat Hotel lately? I didn't think so. Seen the latest Candela Hotel? Missed it, huh? How about your last visit to an I Hotel? Been to the Nicky O? I guess not.

Welcome to the world of hotel brands that never were. The chimera of big-name, big-idea, big-bucks lodgings that never got past the introductory-party stage and into the real estate pipeline. They and dozens of others ghost chains are victims of the worst hotel depression since, well, the Great Depression.

It's no use weeping for all those hotel concepts because they probably weren't needed then and certainly aren't needed now. On an average night in America, nearly 45 percent of the nation's hotel inventory sits empty. The rooms that do rent are selling for an average of about 30 percent less than they were back in early 2008.

Want it up close and personal? I booked a room at the Hilton Garden Inn at Los Angeles Airport earlier this month for $87. I paid twice that for an overnight stay there in 2005. Thanks to my AAA discount and my elite status in Hyatt's frequent-guest program, I paid $200 for a weekend night at the newish Andaz hotel in the old Barclays Bank building on Wall Street and was upgraded to a lavish suite larger than most New Yorkers' apartments. I found four-star rooms in downtown Philadelphia next month for $135 a night. And this weekend I'll be working out of a suite in a hotel in Whippany, New Jersey, (I lead a glamorous life) for $79.

The oversupply in rooms and the plunge in rates have turned the hotel business upside down. Thousands are in default, many have been sold at absolute auctions, and gems like the 7-year-old Ritz-Carlton in Las Vegas closed last month when the lender decided it was cheaper to shut the doors rather than continue to underwrite cash-draining daily operations.

"A lot of hotels are still in trouble," says Mike Leven, a 50-year veteran of the hotel industry who now runs the Sands Corporation, which includes the gigantic Venetian and Palazzo resorts in Las Vegas. "Many have serious financial problems; there are many foreclosures and fast sales to pay off debts."

Leven believes some hotels in Las Vegas, particularly hard-hit by the recession and the "AIG Effect," may need five years just to get rates back to 2007 levels.

The fiscal chaos is leading hotels to pursue some unorthodox strategies to survive. One example: the Greenbrier Resort in rural West Virginia. After a self-made local millionaire appropriately named Jim Justice snatched the bankrupt 721-room resort out from under Marriott last year, he promptly began building an $80 million casino on the 6,500-acre property. It is set to open on July 2. Delta Air Lines this month launched daily flights to the nearest airport from both Atlanta and New York (Justice subsidizes the service). The Greenbrier’s owner convinced the PGA Tour to bring a golf event to the resort's three courses late next month. And Justice says that he'll invest $15 million more in a luxury train to haul passengers nearly six hours from Washington's Union Station to the White Sulphur Springs rail stop near the resort.

Unique promotions aren't unique to out-of-the way places. The Four Seasons in Beverly Hills now rents two luxury suites on one floor to former child actor R.J. Williams, who has turned them into a television studio. The so-called Young Hollywood project films interviews with actors and sports figures. Four Seasons management believes celebrities will raise the profile (and thus the occupancy and room rate) of the hotel in celebrity-crazed Los Angeles.