Colin Reed – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Fioravanti – President and Chief Financial Officer Patrick Chaffin – Senior Vice President of Asset Management Scott Lynn – Senior Vice President and General Counsel.

Jeffrey Donnelly – Wells Fargo Chris Woronka – Deutsche Bank William Crow – Raymond James Shaun Kelley – Bank of America Patrick Scholes – SunTrust.

Welcome to the Ryman Hospitality Properties’ Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. Hosting the call today from Ryman Hospitality Properties are Mr. Colin Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr. Mark Fioravanti, President and Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Patrick Chaffin, Senior Vice President of Asset Management; and Mr.

Scott Lynn, Senior Vice President and General Counsel. This call will be available for digital replay. The number is 800-585-8367, and the conference ID number is 77087314. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Mr. Scott Lynn. Sir, you may begin..

Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. This call may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about the company’s expected future financial performance.

Any statements we make today that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Words such as believes, expects, or similar ones are intended to identify these statements, which may be affected by many factors, including those listed in the company’s SEC filings and in today’s release.

As a result, the company’s actual results may differ materially from the results we discuss or project today. We will not publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or any other reason. We’ll also discuss non-GAAP financial measures today.

We reconcile each non-GAAP measure to the most comparable GAAP financial measure in an exhibit to today’s release. I will now turn the call over to the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Colin Reed..

Thank you, Scott and thanks to everyone for joining the call today. As its customary, I’ll begin by discussing our results for the quarter before giving some additional color around bookings and how the trends we’re seeing in our business shape our thinking regarding the next 18 months.

I will then turn it over to Mark to provide more details on our financials for the quarter as well as the activities around the capital markets.

Over the last several weeks, we’ve experienced some fairly volatile times with regards to equity values with some of our hospitality REIT in large seek of peers and this volatility seems to affected us this morning.

The reason for this I would speculate a twofold, the potential for rising interest rates and misses on RevPar which have left modest revisions to the outlook for the year.

For those businesses who are more heavily relying on the trends in consumer, the analyst in investment community naturally struggles with the question of what do current RevPar declines mean for the remainder of this year as well as for 2016. And this inevitably leads to the commonly discussed question of the hospitality cycle.

Now we at Ryman get asked the question about the cycle quite a lot, and I messaged over the last year or so as being at our business is in good shape and is not experiencing a systematic slow down.

Now you’ll hear that message again this morning, as our group centric model gives us more visibility too and confidence in our future performance than virtually all of our peers. Now let me say this, at no time over the last decade has our team been as confident about the outlook for a company as we are today and here is why.

First, our business is operating better than it ever has, generating record revenue and profits in the second quarter. Second quarter total revenue for Gaylord Hotels brand on a same store basis exceeded the second best second quarter which was 2008 second quarter by 4%.

As second quarter adjusted EBITDA for Gaylord Hotels on a same store basis has exceeded the second best Q2 which was Q2 2012 by 7.5%, generating a second quarter same store EBITDA margin of 34.5%, the best hotel margin delivered in any quarter. Let me repeat that, the margin of 34.5% in this quarter was the best hotel margin we have ever delivered.

Now in addition to the current operating performances, our group pace for 16 has never been stronger, so let’s talk about bookings.

Now, some of the analyst community will probably write the headlines despite our financial performance, the bookings are down for the second quarter which as a matter of fact is correct as we booked 530,000 gross group room nights in the second quarter of 2015 for all future years compared to 640,000 same quarter last year.

However, it’s important to recognize that we faced a very tough comp last year as the second quarter production was the very best second quarter we’ve ever, ever booked and with significantly less inventory available to be booked for 2016. Now despite this, this year’s production exceeded our four year, five year and seven year historical averages.

In my mind however, he should be the headline and here is what distinguishes us from most of the companies we often get compared to.

As of the end of June, we have approximately 110,000 more group room nights booked for 2016 than we did at this time last year for 2015, and to put that into revenue terms, this translates to almost a 11% more rooms revenue on the books for 2016 over the same time last year of 2015.

And from an occupancy’s perspective, this translates into 43.1% occupancy on the books for 2016 as of the end of June compared to 39.8% occupancy at the end of June 2014 for 2015. 2016 has been developing into a strong year for some time now, and it continue to strengthen in the second quarter.

Now, since the end of the quarter, sales activity has remained strong. We had a good production month again in July, in fact we booked about a 130,000 gross group room nights for all future years compared to 82,000 last July. Also our lead volumes, i.e. the pieces of business that our sales folks are pursuing are up same time last year.

So given our operating momentum, and this forward book of business, let’s think about the things that could derail progress and would normally impact the cycle and three obvious things come to mind. First, the economy crashing and burning ala 208, 209 and as we sit here today we don’t see that happening, particularly in the short-term.

Two, extraordinary events ala 9/11 and three, over supply and emerging threats like AB&B.

Now in this regard, we placed – we pay close attention to new supply and while it could be an issue for the limited service sector, we do not see this being a midterm threat to us, as our particular customer the large group simply wants the quality of a resort and the all under one roof experience, and this very little of this type of product being built in the nation.

And then someone who has built a few of these projects I can tell you, that he just takes a long time to berg these projects. And as regard to new entrance like AB&B, it’s pretty difficult to hold a large meeting in someone’s home.

As a consequence, I think that if you are the owner of a large group – or if you’re the owner of large group oriented resorts, these are very good times with healthy demand driving higher occupancies and rate growth and little new group orientated resort supply being built, and that’s how we think about our unique positioning and our opportunity.

Now let me provide some additional color on our properties performance and an update on several hotel specific initiatives. As regards to Gaylord Opryland, Opryland delivered a strong performance in the second quarter with revenue growing over 9% driven by strong outside of the room spending.

Most notably though, Opryland delivered the best single quarter adjusted EBITDA margin performance in its history of nearly 38%. Looking to the third quarter at Opryland, we told you earlier this year we’re going to renovate approximately 500 rooms this year.

Now we’ve accelerated this renovation and are completing all of these rooms within the third quarter, which will have some impact on Opryland’s financial performance in the third quarter.

But given our projects for the fourth quarter and the way 2016 is shaping up, we felt it essential to undertake this renovation in a compressed and in an accelerated manner. The Gaylord National faced a pretty difficult year-over-year comp as Q2 2014 represented the best single quarter revenue performance in the hotel’s history.

We were impacted by a short term 4,000 rooms cancelation that was meeting specific rather than created by any broad economic issues, but despite that we are generally pleased with the way the hotel is being outperforming the overall DC market for some time now, and we expect that to continue for the remaining parts of the year.

Further, we as announced at the beginning of this quarter and discussed on our last call, we’re expanding our outdoor meeting space and adding a new ballroom facility overlooking the Potomac River at the Gaylord National.

We expect the ballroom addition will be underway by the fall and open by the summer of 2016, and we believe it will help us further establish this property’s position say premier location for groups on the East Coast.

And just touching on our newest property, the AC at National Harbor, the hotel opened in early April and while we’re still in the ramp up stage it is performing as we expected when we acquired it with the hotel contributing about a $1 million to adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter.

Now, as regards to Gaylord Texan, it had a tremendous second quarter, delivering 14.6% increase in total revenues and nearly 25% increase in adjusted EBITDA.

Simply put this property has been on fire for the first two quarters of the year, having completed its full room renovation in the third quarter of 2014 and we expected to continue to perform extremely well for the remainder of 2015. And we’re exploring with Marriott and the city of great find ways to further solidify this hotel’s market leadership.

The Gaylord Texan is on track for a record year both in terms of revenue and profitability and we’re very pleased with the way things are going in great mind.

Now moving to Orlando on the Gaylord Palms, this property continues to perform solidly this quarter in the most competitive market in which we operate, with total revenue and profitability both up slightly compared to the prior year quarter.

The third quarter will be a little challenging for the Palms primarily due to the Jewish holiday dates fall in September. However, the fourth quarter is setting up to be a solid quarter due to an increasing group room nights on the books.

So overall, we’re pleased with the state of our hotel business and we’re very excited about its future, and as I said earlier, 2016 is shaping up to be a very good year for Gaylord hotels. Now one more thought regarding advanced group bookings, one of – of course, the critical features that model.

Given July’s production that I referenced earlier, we feel we are well on our way to surpassing last year’s third quarter’s production, despite the fact that we had less inventory to sell into.

And in regards to the fourth quarter, as you all know, this is always as strong as quarter of bookings with December being by far the largest month of production. Last fourth quarter we had the second best quarter for production ever.

So this year’s Q4 production we’ll face, it’s a tough comparison particularly with less inventory available for 2016 but overall, we expect 2015 will be another very good year for bookings and we expect total group production for the year to fall between $2.1 million and $2.3 million gross room nights.

Okay, now let’s take a moment to discuss our national entertainment business. This was once again a very strong performance quarter, representing the sixth consecutive quarter with double digit revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth. Revenue increased 13.1% to $28.2 million and adjusted EBITDA increased $2 million to $11.7 million, a 20.9% increase.

In June we unveiled our Ryman auditorium expansion and tour experience and early indications are that the capital redeployed there is doing exactly what we wanted it to do in terms of attracting new guests and further positioning our entertainment sector – segment for continued success.

So let’s preempt the regular question we get on these earnings calls as to what we intend to do with our entertainment business.

First of all, we’re working on continuing the growth of the business, exploring more entertainment locations, expanded retail strategies, including e-commerce, the development of new content as well as pursuing distribution of what we currently have.

We’ve engaged consultants to help us with this and I think we’re a few months away from having the completed roadmap that will drive this business forward. Now I know some of you want to know when and how, until the work is complete we cannot be more specific about our direction or the timing.

This is an exciting business and that’s continuing to pretty rapid – to grow pretty rapidly and we want to make sure we get this right. So in summary, we have a very good company on our hands that is growing across the board.

Now as is the case, at this time of the year we have reviewed our guidance for the rest of the year and have made a couple of minor modifications to RevPar and total RevPar but feel pretty good about really what matches most which is the profitability of business. And Mark will talk about the specifics in a minute.

But given the direction of our profitability and taken into consideration our dividend policy, our board is approved a $0.05 increase to our quarterly dividends to $0.70 per share which is a 7.7% increase over our quarterly dividend, over our second quarter dividend.

We planned to pay a total 2015 annual dividend of $2.70 per share representing a nearly 23% increase on an annualized basis to last year. This increase is truly indicative of the help of our business and how we’re thinking about the future. And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Mark..

Thank you, Colin and good morning, everyone. In the second quarter the company generated total revenue of $274 million, up 6.3% in the prior year quarter. During the quarter the company generated net income available with common shareholders of $41.4 million or $0.80 for fully diluted share.

The company grew profitability in the quarter generating $91.8 million in adjusted EBITDA, improving the EBITDA margin by a 190 basis points. For the quarter the company generated $74.8 million of AFFO or a $1.45 per fully diluted share.

Turning to the hospitality segment results, the hotels finished the quarter on a same store basis with RevPar growth of 3.1% and total RevPar increase of 4.5%, on a pro forma basis adjusted for the impact of the [indiscernible] accounting changes, comparable same store total RevPar increased 5.2%.

During the second quarter we saw an increase in attrition rates up 220 basis points to 13.4%. The increase in attrition during the quarter as attributable to a couple of specific groups and there is no indication that we’re experiencing a systemic issue or trend. Cancelations during the first quarter decreased 33.8% to 6,000 group rooms.

Attrition in cancelation fees collective during the quarter totaled $2.1 million. Compared to the prior year quarter, consolidated hospitality segment adjusted EBITDA increased 11.1% to $85 million. Consolidated hospitality adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 170 basis points to 34.6%.

On a same store basis, adjusted EBITDA increased 9.7% to $84 million and hospitality adjusted EBITDA margin increased a 160 basis points to 34.5%. It’s worth noting that three of our hotels the Gaylord Opryland, Gaylord Texan and Gaylord National had adjusted EBITDA margins exceeding 34% for the quarter.

During the second quarter, the entertainment segment revenue increased 12.9% to $28.2 million and the segment’s second quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 20.4% to a $11.7 million. Corporate and other adjusted EBITDA totaled the loss of $5 million in the second quarter of 2015 compared to a loss of $4.7 million in the second quarter of 2014.

Moving to the balance sheet, as of June 30, we had total debt of approximately $1.49 billion and unrestricted cash of $41.3 million, resulting a net debt outstanding of $1.45 billion including $736.5 million of borrowings drawn under the company’s credit facility leaving $359.5 million of availability under the facility.

During the quarter, we completed a prior replacement of $490 of eight year 5% senior unsecured notes during 2023. And the company’s proceeds from the offering to repay our outstanding $300 million term loan and a portion of the amounts outstanding under the revolver.

We also re-cashed our credit facility extending the maturity for an additional two years. Through this process, we were able to favorably modify certain covenants and approval of all pricing. With these activities complete the company has no debt maturities until 2019 and is significantly reduce its exposure to flowing rate debt.

The company paid second quarter 2015 cash dividend of $0.65 per share on July 2016 to stockholders record on June 30. And as Colin mentioned in his opening remarks, the company has increased its quarterly dividend by $0.05 to $0.70 per share of common stock which is a 7.7% increase over the previous quarterly dividend.

The company’s current plan to distribute total annual dividend of approximately $2.70 per share for 2015 with the remaining quarterly payments occurring in October and January. Any future dividend is subject to the board’s to termination as to the amount and timing of the quarterly distributions.

Now turning to our guidance and outlook for the remainder of the year, we’ve trend our RevPar and tightened our total RevPar guidance providing the midpoint, a 100 basis points and 25 basis points respectively.

By the second half are setting up a continued strong performance, a more challenging than anticipated Jewish holiday pattern, particularly at the Palms, and the acceleration of the Opryland rooms refurbishment are impacting our third quarter metrics and we are adjusting them accordingly.

We anticipate our third quarter revenue performance will be flat up slightly.

As we indicated on previous calls, our fourth quarter is shaping up to be our strongest quarter of the year and at the end of the second quarter, we had approximately 39,000 more group room nights on the books by the fourth quarter versus the same time last year for the fourth quarter of 2014.

Given the strength of our margin performance year-to-date, and our outlook, we’re not modifying our adjusted EBIDTA or AFFO expectations. Let me close by saying that this quarter was very solid for our company, particularly in some of our hotels with past previous records in terms of revenue and profitability.

We remain bullish on the group’s segment as we look out over the second half of 2015 and into 2016, our businesses are well positioned, our balance sheet is in great shape and we continue to grow the dividend. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Colin for any closing remarks..

I’m going to skip closing remarks. Jackie, if we could open the lines for questions please..

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Jeff Donnelly with Wells Fargo..

Good morning, guys. My apologize Colin, I missed a piece of your remarks on the entertainment segment just to start off, so I want to sort of go back for a moment.

Did you say you were hiring or I’m sorry, hired and indulged to explore options to separate that business or should I assume a separation is not a foregone conclusion?.

Oh wait, no, no, no.

We’ve – what I said was Jeff, if you’d been on the call, I said we’ve got consultants helping us build the long range plan for this business because we just got so many different opportunities to grow business and we got folks helping us with how do we distribute the content, we’ve got folks helping us with broad aspects of the plan and you – I think it was a major leap to say that we’ve hired someone to explore whether we spend the business.

We’re building this long range plan, we are doing things on the – on adding more resources to the people front and as soon as this plan is built then we’ll make the determination do we spin or do we hold..

Okay, thanks for clarifying.

And then just switching to bookings, are there any discernible shifts you are seeing in, I guess, call it booking activity in the market? I mean is the window lengthening your view, do you think there’s more sort of itty-bitty business to be had, or are you seeing meeting planners maybe spend more per attendee or per event?.

Yeah. Let me sort of go 30,000 feet on this and I’m going to pause this over to Patrick who is sort of like every hour in the leads on this.

What we’ve been seeing over the last – I suppose year and a half really, if you go back and you look at our Q2 of last year we had, I think it was the best Q2 we’ve ever had in bookings and fourth quarter last year was the second best year – second best fourth quarter we’ve ever had in bookings.

We’ve been booking a lot of business into this company and we’ve been booking a lot of corporate business. And as you know, the corporate customer tends to book in this sort of 12 to 24 month window.

And as Mark said, for the fourth quarter we’ve got approximately 40,000 more room nights into good solid book of corporate business more than we had this time last year for the fourth quarter, and next year right now when you add in the July performance Patrick, I gave the numbers to June where we are up about a 110,000 when you add the July numbers and I think we’re near a 130,000 more room nights on the books but a very solid book of corporate business.

And we are seeing good performance in outside of the room stand and we saw that again actually in the second quarter of this year in the performance that we’ve just laid out. Patrick, you want to just talk about meeting planners and what we’re seeing there..

Sure. And hey Jeff, good morning, this is Patrick. Just to add a little bit on to what Colin has already said, the corporate segment continues to be where we saw a lot of growth.

To give you a little additional color on his comments, we currently stand with about a 145,000 more corporate room nights on the books for 2016 than where we stood this time last year for 2015. So that segment has seen tremendous growth.

The booking windows overall really haven’t changed dramatically but we continue to see groups, once they get on property increase their outside the room spend which given the amount of outside of the room offerings that we had in our hotels, this continues to do well for us and you can see that as evidence in the second quarter.

We are pleasantly surprised that we continue to see groups like former groups booking last minute.

And so with hotels of our size we normally don’t get large pieces of business in the year for the year at this point of the year, but we’re continue to see a number of pharmaceutical groups take a look at us with only weeks to spare before they have their meeting. So, the corporate segment continues to be the area of growth.

Let’s not say that association hasn’t shown some good indications but corporate is where the real strong growth is happening..

Thanks. And maybe just one last question on just RevPAR in the back half of the year, the second-quarter RevPAR and total RevPAR was a little bit softer than our expectation and trailed behind the two-year growth base that we had seen in the first quarter.

Since Q2 was arguably your easiest year-over-year comp of this year and seasonally strong from Ryman, are you able to give us a little confidence about the revenue on the books that you have today for Q3 and Q4? Because that's where I think your comps are getting more difficult, and I think that is where people will look for a little more confidence that you can hit your RevPAR objectives..

Well, first of all, Q2 last year Mark, we had very strong RevPar growth right?.

Yeah, it was – Q2 of last year, it was….

[Indiscernible].

It’s 4.6% was total RevPar and that’s 3.4% RevPar last year..

Last year, yeah..

Yeah..

But in terms of the third and fourth quarter, I think we believe third quarter is going to be flat simply because of what we’re doing at Opryland and what Mark talked about at the Palms. But the fourth quarter where we have 40,000 more group room nights on the books, fourth quarter is going to be a very good quarter for us..

Yeah, that’s where the driver of the fourth quarter Jeff. You’re correct, Q3 of last year and Q4 of last year we’re very strong, RevPar and total RevPar performances but as we look ahead we have such a strong book of group business on the books for Q4. We feel really good about where that’s headed.

As typical for us, Q4 has a significant amount of transient business to be booked at this point of the year but as we going into the quarter with that kind of group business it gives us a lot of confidence in that last year..

And we can’t underscore enough what we’re seeing on 2016 Jeff, I mean this is where we are for 2016 we haven’t seen this type of lift before.

And with the end of June’s 3.5 points of occupancy more on the books at the end of July almost 4 points of occupancy more on the books and Patrick talked about the quality of that business with about a 140,000 group, more corporate room nights on the books of 2016. 2016 is shaping up to be a very strong year for our company..

Okay, thanks, guys. I’ll yield the floor..

Thank you..

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank..

Hey, good morning, guys. Just a quick follow-up on the 2016 bookings.

Can you give us maybe a sense for where the rate on that is and whether you expect that the out of room spend will be greater next year than this year?.

Pat, do you want to give that a go?.

Sure. The rate shows a modest increase. We’re seeing a lot of rate growth in some of the – for the years out.

But outside the room and we’re just starting into our budget process with Marriott but I would tell you that we expect that with the amount of corporate room nights on the books and some high rated association, we do expect that outside the room spend we’ll be hoping next year..

Okay. Very good.

And then have you guys kind of, I guess, scrubbed your bookings, what's on the books kind of top to bottom for any energy? Some of the issues you saw in the quarter, was this related to energy accounts?.

Well hold on a sec, when you say issues in the quarter, what issues are you referring to? Because we had a record quarter.

We’ve never produced a second quarter like this, so what are we talking about, the issues?.

Yeah, fair enough. I was just looking at the attrition number that was up a little bit year over year. I was thinking maybe that might be related some [indiscernible].

Yeah, Chris that was not related to energy in anyway, that was really just one group that did not see the performance update, initially they anticipated quite honestly I think they got a little ahead of themselves.

And any underperformance by groups while we saw outperformance from some groups there were some groups that underperformed, it was not related to energy and it really wasn’t related to any kind of macroeconomic issues..

Okay, helpful. And just wanted to ask about the renovation at Opryland and is that – I mean, you guys did a terrific job with the Texan, and you’re seeing very strong results kind of post-renovation there.

Do you expect a bit of a rate lift coming out of the Opryland renovation as well, or is that more kind of maintenance-related?.

Well, let’s be clear. At Opryland, this is really more maintenance related but we are getting a ton of demand for Opryland, for groups wanting to come to Nashville and go to Opryland.

And in fact next year, I think the number Patrick is, we’ve got nearly somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 more group room nights, more group room nights on the books for Opryland next year than we did for – we had for this year. So we’re getting a lot of demand for Opryland right now.

And we’ve got, I suppose over the next two years probably 1,500 rooms to do and just part of the cycle of renovation. And so what we’re trying to do is manage this renovation in very short, sharp purse where we can do 400, 500 rooms over the space of about three, four weeks.

So, we’re not doing this to extrapolate more rate next year, we have to refurbish these rooms and satisfy the demand from the customer that we’re seeing month-by-month that want to come to this hotel next year, the year after and the year after..

But Chris, to your point, if you look historically at renovation that just happened in Palms, we get very nice rate lift post these renovations because we sell into these renovated rooms prior to their completion to groups. And groups like the new product and it brings rate and occupancy to the hotels..

Okay. Got it. Very good. Thanks, guys..

Our next question comes from the line of Bill Crow with Raymond James..

Good morning, guys.

On the Opryland renovation, did you turn away any groups in the third quarter so that you could create that space to do the renovations?.

So, hey Bill, this is Patrick. What we really did was, we looked at August and said there is an opportunity for us to go ahead and squeeze as much as of the renovation in the August as possible.

Now as we get into booking some of the smallest groups that we help fill in the remaining gaps, yeah there is groups that are going to essentially be shut out as a result of the renovation. But the reality is, we’re taking the best opportunity throughout the year to get it squeezed in.

And what we did was we accelerated it into the third quarter and made sure it was not impacting the fourth quarter, simply because October was stacking up as such a good month from a group perspective that we didn’t want to have any remaining impact from the renovation.

So you’re always going to have the impact of displacing some groups but we tried to do and have done in the past is do it over the periods of the year when we’re going to minimize that impact, and August is that month for us..

All right. Colin, you’ve kind of tempered enthusiasm for 4Q bookings, which I understand given the greater occupancy heading into 2015.

So, if you go back a year to the fourth quarter of 2014, what percentage of those bookings were done for 2015 versus all future periods? In other words, is it really higher occupancy that’s going to hurt you going into the fourth quarter this year, or how do we think about all future periods?.

No, look, my comment was more of this. Forgive me sounding political at the self side here, Bill, but the headlines that get written at times don’t tell the story.

The headlines, we have down on bookings this quarter versus last year when you had a tremendous last year, we had in Q2 of 2014, we had a tremendous second quarter of bookings, it was the best second quarter bookings we’ve ever had.

And all I’m saying to you is that, all I’m saying to the investment community is that we booked almost 900,000 room nights in the fourth quarter of last year and that’s one of the reasons why 2016 is shaping up to be good and 2015 is a record year for us.

And all I’m saying is, we cannot promise the same level of bookings at this stage, but every indication looks really good because lead volumes are up over this time last year, and that’s what I’m saying. We’re trying to be very transparent about what’s going on the forward bookings part because it is so critical to a model.

But we have been adding to 2016 now for a year and a half and 2016, as we keep saying, is shaping up to be again best year for us but we will – we hope, we do not hope, we believe we’re going to book between 2.1 million and 2.3 million group room nights this year which is tremendous production. So, we will see when we get to the fourth quarter..

Yeah, okay..

And Bill, the other thing I would add to that is, the simple reality is we have less available inventory because as the corporate growth burst was really occurring in third and fourth quarter of last year we took advantage of it and we secured a lot of really good corporate room nights for the booking window they were looking at, at good rates.

And as we head into the fourth quarter of this year we have less available inventory, but now as we’re moving more into the 2017 and the early part of 2018 in that booking window, we have the available inventory and get start putting some corporate in there.

So, we have less available inventory for 2016 and that’s a good problem to have but that’s really what’s impacting how we sort of balance what our expectations for the fourth quarter this year..

And the less inventory passion, let’s just give one more snapshot of information. That increase in corporate – that increase in room nights that we have on the books for 2016 basically falls first, second and third quarter..

That’s correct..

That’s the way it steps out, it’s not third and fourth quarter. The investment community won’t have to wait to the end of next year to see the benefits of this additional room nights on the books.

So, the great thing about in the fourth quarter is corporations tend to be booking in that 12 to 24 month range where we hopefully – we can accommodate them. But this is a nice problem to have that we’re facing now which is this building inventory of group room nights on the books..

Appreciate the color. One, just kind of 30,000 foot question Colin, on Nashville, which has kind of been historically a one trick pony, it’s a heck of a pony right now, and it’s driving great business.

But is there anything that city leaders are considering in order to broaden the appeal of Nashville as a destination market?.

Well, we - Thursday of this week we have mayoral election, and the first round, and it will be a runoff – two candidates will be in that run off which will take place in about three weeks from now.

And I think the sort of folks that, the leaders in the club house I would say the top three and four are all pro growth I think candidates, and I think all of them have agendas to deal with things like infrastructure, transportation to improve moving people around in this city.

The problem the city is having is that the city is creating a ton of demand and more and more people want to come here, and the issue is making sure that the city has got the infrastructure and the people to service the people who are coming here for a fun time, a convention time.

So, I’m pretty optimistic that the city leadership will deal with the what I will call the growing pains of too much demand or not too much demand, a very good demand. And – but I don’t think you’re going to see things done by the elected officials in this town that will be detrimental to growth..

Okay, thank you..

Thank you..

Our next question comes from the line of Shaun Kelley with Bank of America..

Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my question. First question was really on 3Q, you guys I think we’re pretty clear that the bulk of the issues that you're seeing around Orlando and the Palms and the calendar shift.

But I'm curious a couple of our companies have talked about weaker citywide in Washington DC, and granted that might be in the urban center and you guys sort of have your own unique orbit out at National Harbor.

But I'm curious are you guys seeing any impact, or is there any impact expected in your guidance for weakness in DC in 3Q?.

Hey Shaun, this is Patrick, just to address that question. We are not seeing any kind of weakness at Gaylord National.

We have heard rumblings that the market is struggling a bit on citywides but the National has security good book of business and we expect Q3 to your point, we have talked about the Palms and some of the challenges with the Jewish holidays and the renovation at Opryland but we do expect the National have actually a pretty good third quarter.

So we’re not seeing that..

Where these citywides affect us is that, it creates compression in the market and then tourists who want to go to the market will move to locations like the National, move to locations like Opryland if Downtown National is full up. So citywides are important but not directly, they’re indirectly important..

Thanks for that. My second question is just I think it's sort of I’ve been asked in a different way, but the obligatory oil and gas question.

But just overall in terms of group or corporate business, just kind of overall across your properties, how much does the energy sector sort of makeup of your overall general book of business? Is there kind of a directional number you guys can give us?.

Patrick?.

Yeah, we work really hard to make sure that no single industry or segment makes up a significant portion of our business and I would tell you that it’s going to be much less than 5%.

So, whether folks are saying, well banking is challenging or pharmaceutical is not challenging, whatever segment it might be, we do a really good job of making sure that we have a very diversified portfolio of large groups to pull from. And so, when we see weakness in a one segment it doesn’t give us true alarm..

The only hotel, I suppose the only hotel that you could say has miniscule exposure to the energy would be our Texan hotel which right now has strong – with Opryland that’s strongest hotel. So we’re just not seeing, we don’t have much business in the oil sector in that hotel..

Yeah, and just to build on that, Houston has seen the impact of the Dallas market at least from the perspective of where we’re operating has not felt as much of an impact for that. And as you can see to Colin’s point, the Texan has literally been on fire this year with its performance..

Yeah, and even more impressive given all the flooding that was happening down there. So my third question and last would just be, you talked a little bit about 2016 already, the 145,000, I think if I called it correct, corporate nights that are up.

Can you help us translate, I think you said that 3.5% to 4% growth in nights probably on a corporate base.

But can you help us translate that into more like a pace number if your inclusive of rate for the whole year?.

Yeah, just – Patrick is going to have all these data..

So, as far as 2016, just to clarify, what we have on the books at the end of the second quarter represented about 9.4% increase in room nights on the books or about 10.7% increase in revenue.

And then to Colin’s point, July was a good month for us and we just closed out and that translated into we’re now standing with 2016 being up 10.7% in room nights and about 12% up in revenue.

So, is there more specific question beyond that that you want to understand?.

No, I think that's it, Patrick. That's exactly what I was looking for. I guess the last piece of it then would be as you work through your sort of typical yield curve, you may be booking some earlier rather than later.

So would you expect those numbers to decelerate as you get into third and fourth quarter just because you got as much as you can get on the books, or do you think that kind of magnitude can hold?.

We were always historically normally see some deceleration or erosion in that number. And so we’re working real hard to do as we go into our budget season as to understand how much to expect.

And so we’ll give you an update in November where we stand, but again to Colin’s point, the first three quarters of 2016 look very good and there is still some additional available inventory in the fourth quarter. So we’ll kind of watch this and see how much it decelerates.

We don’t think it will be – it won’t fall apart on us by any stretch but there will be some deceleration..

Thank you very much..

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholes with SunTrust..

Hi, good morning here. I wonder if you can flush out a little bit more, you talked in the press release – talked about a few corporate groups underperforming and then in your commentary talked about these groups getting ahead of themselves. What exactly does that mean? I'm not completely following when you said got ahead of themselves..

So, we had a couple of groups that cancel short-term because of specific, I can’t go into it because I don’t want to reveal the group is, but specific issues related just as the group themselves. We had some groups underperform.

We had one group – when we talk about getting ahead of themselves we had one group where it was two organizations that were merging together and so there was no real history for that meeting planner to understand how many folks would actually turn out for their meeting.

And so they made it more bullish estimate and it turned out to be a little bit over reaching. And so it wasn’t economic related, it was just, hey we got two new groups coming together and we don’t really have a history on them and so they made a stand in the dark as far as how many would show up and didn’t come together where we thought.

And then we just had some groups that we’re trying to understand where the current trends in the past six months would play out as far as how their group would perform.

Some of the groups actually put more bullish numbers out there and then we cut them back and scrub them back, so there were some underperformance there but again it’s a mix bag of really group specific issues..

Okay, thank you for the color. And then on the renovation project, Gaylord, Opryland, I apologize if you had given these statistics before.

How many rooms is that, what is the expected cost, and what, again, is the timing or finishing for that completion of that?.

About 480….

Yeah, roughly just under 500..

Or something like that..

That’s right. It essentially puts about 18,000 room nights out of order which is also included in the release as far as the detail.

It should be finished by sometime in September, won’t bleed over into October and then from a cost perspective, Colin?.

It’s about 20,000 a key..

Yeah..

And Patrick, that’s all captured within our FF&E reserve..

Right..

Okay, very good. Thank you for the detail..

Thanks Patrick..

And there appear to be no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the floor back over to Colin Reed for any additional or closing remarks..

Yeah, thank you Jackie, and thanks everyone for being on the phone this morning. And we believe these are very good results and the company is in great shape and we are really looking forward to next year.

So, if you have any additional follow-up questions, you know how to get hold-off us and look forward to seeing you all, and enjoy the rest of the summer. Thank you..

Thank you. This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect..