Inner tubing on a water-soaked driving range or balancing a Frisbee on your head while trying to assemble toy blocks in under a minute hardly seem the stuff of which robust hotel profits are made. But this summer, after two years of steep discounting that have cut deeply into the lodging industry’s bottom line, hotels are getting more creative about how to entice visitors to book a room without having to invoke the “D” word.

To be sure, discounts, which became a staple of hotels’ business plans during the recession, have not entirely vanished, although they’re certainly fewer and farther between this summer.

Most hoteliers concur that the despair that infiltrated the tourism industry during the last few years has begun to lift, and despite a still tepid economic recovery, they’re feeling confident enough to start raising room rates, especially during the normally busy summer season.