The Great Recession has cast a long shadow over the Capital Region. The economy has been static. Recovery has been slow. But in the hard-hit hospitality business, the pause has spurred opportunity for reinvention.

Forget books, exams and professors. The campus buzz at Stockton’s University of the Pacific is about the hottest new idea in off-campus housing: Lofts at the University Plaza Waterfront Hotel.

“I arrived in the City of Saloons,” wrote Mark Twain upon arriving here in 1866. “You can shut your eyes and march into the first door you come to and call for a drink, and the chances are that you will get it.”

State trade groups generate nearly $90 billion in annual spending nationwide through education and training programs, meeting products and services, and local, state and federal taxes, according to the California Society of Association Executives. Roughly 15 percent of that is spent right here in California, and much of it winds up in the till of the hospitality industry.

Spring weather has graced area ski resorts with abundance, dumping generous volumes of snow on the slopes for giddy guests.

What to give? What to give? Faced with that nagging question at birthdays, weddings or other celebratory occasions, tides of consumers are turning to the ubiquitous gift card.

Fifty years after the VIII Olympic Winter Games in 1960 brought the world to the slopes of Squaw Valley USA, and after years of toil and dashed hopes, a two-state effort aimed at bringing the games back to the Reno-Tahoe region in 2022 is gathering steam.

When Meg Whitman arrives in Sacramento to campaign for the gubernatorial race, she stays at the Citizen Hotel. “It’s her home away from home,” says Mark Mathews, the hotel’s general manager.

With jet fuel going for $5.83 per gallon for full service at Sacramento Executive Airport and $5.75 per gallon for full service at Mather Airport, the $4.99 price tag for the product at Davis Flight Support serves as the initial draw for pilots looking to fill up their corporate jets and chill out near Napa or Sacramento.

Several new doors have opened in the Tahoe area the past five years, but few are as grand as those at the $300 million Ritz-Carlton at Northstar.