I've appraised several properties in southeast New Mexico over the last 5 years or so. Hobbs, NM is the most prominent city on the NM side of the Permian basin, though at about 50,000 population it's still a lot smaller than Midland and Odessa (over 100,000 population each).
The bottom line is that while you might be able to obtain higher yields investing in that kind of market, there is significant risk to offset it. Also, as an outside investor in the market you're never going to have the level of knowledge or access as a local. I know a couple of larger players in that market and I can almost guarantee that before some deal gets listed for sale and broadcast to a larger regional or national audience that they probably got a look at it and passed. Those types of markets are very small when it gets down to it and if you've got a million dollar investment there's only a relative handful of people in the area with the cash available to act on that quickly. If the deal size is a lot less then obviously there are far more potential investors. Either way, if a seller needs to look for a buyer nationally it's because A. the deal is too large for local investors, B. it's not really a deal and they're hoping to find someone a bit less savvy than the locals to overpay for it.
As a couple of examples, I saw a lot of industrial office/warehouse/shop type buildings on a couple of acres of land sell over the last decade. Mostly sold to owner-users but a few investors purchased leased properties. If that same building were in a larger market like Albuquerque, NM I would typically expect to see a yield of 8-10%. In Hobbs, NM that same property might sell at a 7% yield when things are really booming or more realistically, at a 11-13% yield with things are more stable or in a bust phase. The typical tenant might sign a 3-year lease if you're lucky or they're a large national company. 1- or 2-year leases were more common with 5-year + leases being very uncommon outside of large national companies. Either way, the tenant who is willing to pay $2,500 a month one year might be out of business the next or only able to pay $2,000 a month a year later. Sure you can get some great returns if they stick around a decade and you can keep raising the rent a couple percent a year. It doesn't take a building being empty for very long to wipe out a lot of those gains.
The hotel angle is even riskier. At one point in Hobbs, NM several years ago there were probably 4-5 hotels being built at the same time. Every single apartment complex in the city was 100% occupied with waiting lists for any new units. A few years later when oil prices were no longer $100+ a barrel those hotels were now competing against each other for the remaining business and apartment occupancy was back to 90-95%. A lot of guys would rent a 2-3 bedroom apartment and then have 4-6 guys in that one apartment since they might work different shifts and would essentially share a room. If you're working 12-hour shifts day in and day out you don't have much time to hang around in a hotel or apartment so you might not really care too much what the accommodations are like. A lot of companies would setup man-camps closer to the actual operations to cut down on the commute time and make sure their employees weren't going out and getting drunk in their limited down-time. That directly cuts down on the amount of hotel rooms or apartments needed in a market to support all of those workers. RV Parks are also a very cheap and fast way to increase supply and I saw a lot of those being built in Carlsbad, NM when hotel rooms were getting full and going for up to $200+ a night for something modest. $600 a month to park an RV is a whole lot cheaper than a hotel room and a good alternative when other options like apartments and houses are full. Plus, you're month-to-month and can easily move if a better opportunity comes along in some other oilfield town.