By Alabama Public Radio
Tuscaloosa, AL – It's hard to find a hotel room in the Tuscaloosa area. The firm Smith Travel Research says the number of available rooms in the county has grown less than 4 percent since 2000. However, the demand for rooms has grown almost 44 percent during that time. A study by The Tuscaloosa News shows there are slightly more than 24-hundred rooms in the area. But people in the lodging industry say the problem isn't the quantity, but quality, of hotel properties.