Local hotels are bracing for tepid revenue growth that will be outpaced by rising expenses next year, according to a forecast presented Thursday to Boston-area hotel executives.

Chalk it up to America's economic anxiousness. Sure, the US dollar's weakness is luring more European and Canadian visitors. But fewer convention attendees have booked Boston hotel rooms for 2009, and business and leisure travelers alike are tightening their budgets as airfares rise for travelers to the city that boasts the second-highest average room rates in the country.

The Pinnacle Advisory Group predicts hotel occupancy rates will slip to 76 percent in Boston and Cambridge next year, compared with a forecasted 77 percent for this year. Suburban hotels are projected to fill only 62 percent of rooms in 2009, compared with this year's expected 63 percent.

However, revenue per available room -- a key metric in the hotel business found by multiplying the occupancy rate by the average room rate -- is projected to grow 1.7 percent in Boston and Cambridge, because hotels on average will be able to charge $223.76 a night, or 3 percent more than this year. In the suburbs skirted by Route 495, that metric is expected to rise 1.4 percent, as the average daily rate grows 3 percent to $114.08.

Meanwhile, hotel costs are expected to climb 5 percent next year, Pinnacle principal Rachel Roginsky told hotel executives gathered for the Massachusetts Lodging Association's Outlook Greater Boston 2009 conference. "The profitability is going to drop," she said. "Many of the hotels, though, today are very good in looking for ways to reduce costs."

The outlook was sobering for the 275 local hoteliers who came to the conference seeking insights as they spend this month formulating their 2009 budgets and marketing plans.

"It's clear the market has slowed down," Erwin Schinnerl, general manager of The Ritz-Carlton, Boston Common, said after the presentations. "It will challenge the operational expertise of hotels to be good business managers to balance the small revenue growth with increases in expenses, such as energy costs and labor costs."

Schinnerl's hotel this year started recycling light bulbs, batteries, and cooking oil to trim its trash removal bill. And it convenes an energy-efficiency team every month that, among other things, walks through the building looking for places where the lighting can be turned down a bit.

Pinnacle built its forecast from interviews with local hotel executives and data on how many rooms were booked for 2009 as of last week at about 16 major properties in the Back Bay, downtown, and waterfront districts.

Factors expected to drag occupancy rates down next year include conventions that will last fewer days or have fewer attendees, a possible actors strike that would keep film crews away, and airlines scaling back flights in and out of the Hub. Though Logan International Airport expects a slight increase in December, airlines have cut seat capacity 5.7 percent for both October and November, said Matthew Brelis, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs the airport. And airline analysts say more cuts are needed by the end of this year and through 2009 for carriers burdened by high fuel prices to break even.

Matthew Arrants, a managing partner at Pinnacle, said bookings at six Back Bay hotels for this November, and February, March, and April 2009 look "scary."

"We're going to have a tough stretch there," he said.

But it's going to be tougher in the suburbs, which still haven't recovered from the loss of business travelers after the dot-com bust.

"You've seen slow, slow growth in demand of hotels in suburbs," Roginsky said.

And now record gas prices are deterring some vacationers from exploring outside the city.

"We've lost so many bus tours just because of the price of gas," said Harley Chien, director of sales at Hampton Inn Boston-Norwood.

Ones that did come during the spring brought half as many students or senior citizens as last year. And more vacant rooms loom as vacationers skip fall foliage tours.

The retrenchment "makes me nervous." she said.

Nicole C. Wong can be reached at nwong(AT)globe.com.