image
Real Estate - REIT - Hotel & Motel - NYSE - US
$ 111.41
-0.704 %
$ 6.67 B
Market Cap
19.14
P/E
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT
EARNINGS CALL TRANSCRIPT 2016 - Q3
image
Executives

Colin Reed - Chairman and CEO Mark Fioravanti - President and CFO Patrick Chaffin - SVP, Asset Management Scott Lynn - SVP and General Counsel.

Analysts

Dany Asad - Bank of America Jeff Donnelly - Wells Fargo Smedes Rose - Citi Bill Crow - Raymond James Chip Oat - Tradition Capital Management Andrew Berg - Post Advisory Group.

Operator

Welcome to the Ryman Hospitality Properties’ Third Quarter 2016 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 1-800-585-8367 and the conference ID number is 92690727. 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..

Scott Lynn Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary

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 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, or expects 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.

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 measure in an exhibit to today’s release. I will now turn the call over to Colin..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Thanks Scotty. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us on the call today. As you read this morning, in our third quarter earnings release, this was a very good quarter for our business. Now, it seems that at every investor meeting that we have, there are questions regarding the health of the industry.

So, before we discuss our quarterly results, I want to spend a moment to give you our thought on what we see and why we think our hotel business remains competitively positioned. And after that, I’ll briefly touch on some of the investments we are making and then I’ll hand over the call for Mark to go through the financials.

So, where are we as an industry at this point in time? Now, as you, no doubt, have been reading and hearing, near-term hotel demand specifically in the corporate transient segment has slowed a little with overall industry RevPAR growth projected to be in the low single-digits for 2017. But nevertheless, positive.

Now as some have pointed out, a portion of this deceleration is due to the current economic and political climates. Others have focused on a reduced citywide convention calendar in some markets that is negatively impacting group pace, while others have raised concerns about new supply growth.

While some see slowing near-term RevPAR growth as an end to the lodging cycle, we view this a little differently. We do not think the U.S.

economy is going into a tailspin and believe that some companies are taking short-term measures during these times of uncertainty, becoming a little more cautious on committing to short-term non-discretionary expenditures.

Yes, the supply side of the overall hospitality industry is increasing but it is heavily concentrated in the smaller limited service sector and about a dozen markets, and there is no doubt that some of these markets will be hard-pressed to see positive RevPAR growth in 2017.

But our business doesn’t look like the average that we are often compared to and that’s why our unique positioning provides us with a totally different perspective. We believe our consistent financial performance and competitive positioning demonstrates why we are an attractive investment opportunity.

Now, let me provide a little more color on how we see the opportunities ahead of us. Now, as you can see from our year-to-date results, 2016 is on pace to be a record year for our Company.

In fact our RevPAR growth this past quarter increased about 9% over the third quarter of last year, which is right in the middle of the range we provided on our last call. And while this growth is materially higher than the industry average of 3.3%, we recognize that 9% year-over-year growth is not a sustainable trend.

As we outlined on the last call, we have seen some softness in the smaller group bookings from primarily in the corporate segment where meeting planners have been more cautious on booking for the short-term. Whether this trend post-election continues into 2017, clearly, we’ll have to wait and see.

But we believe the most important question is, what is the willingness of meeting planners and groups to book large long-term business? Now, what we’re seeing gives us a lot of confidence in the future. Because meeting planners, associations and corporations are taking the exact opposite approach to those focused on the smaller short-term meetings.

And this can be clearly seen in our bookings production over this past year for 2018, 2019 and beyond. In fact, at this time last year, looking out two years i.e. into 2017, we had 33 points of occupancy on the books.

As we sit here today looking out two years for 2018, we have 38 points of occupancy already on the books, the statistic I doubt any other hospitality company in our can claim.

My point here is that while the short-term outlook for the industry may look a little choppy, it shouldn’t cloud investors’ views on the long-term opportunities that lie ahead, particularly as it relates to our business.

I believe the characteristics of our hospitality business allows us to take a long-term view and to make strategic decisions investments that we believe will driver higher returns -- that should be high returns to our shareholders. Now, let’s talk about some of these characteristics.

One thing investors and analysts frequently hear from hotel REITs is that the lack of citywide conventions in certain markets negatively affect their performance. By contrast, our hotels to a large extent control their own destiny, as we effectively create our own citywides, all under one roof. Our large bookings are focused on these groups.

And as you can see from our third quarter results, our production continues to be very strong and gives us confidence to continue making smart growth investments for the future. Now, in terms of new supply, we’re not looking at the current supply trends as a barrier to overcome, quite the contrary.

For us, the dynamics we are seeing in fact represent a major opportunity. As I’ve pointed out in the past, there is very little competitive supply in the pipeline in the large group space. Now, let’s look a little more closely at what I mean by this.

In the 1,000-room class segment of the pipeline, you’ll only find 11 hotels across America in either the planning or construction phase. Of course, one of these is our 1,500-room joint venture hotel in Colorado, the Gaylord Rockies.

That means only 10, 1,000 plus rooms in the pipeline and five of which are under construction and five in some form of planning. Now, out of the five under construction, apart from Genting’s hotel in Las Vegas, the largest meeting space being built at the remaining four is 150,000 square feet.

So, it’s accurate to say, supply is not likely to be a competitive threat to our business. Now, this next piece of data, I think is very critical for investors who look at our Company. The largest segment of the meetings business, i.e. those meetings with 1,000 or more attendees, continue to grow strongly.

As Smith Travel recently reported, in 2013, meetings with 1,000 or more attendees represented 32% of group demand, but in 2015 that has jumped to 37%, the group demand. This is a material change. And this trend towards larger meetings is one that we’re seeing in our own production.

For the year-to-date period through September, 49% of annual books were associated with meetings of a 1,000 or more on peak room nights and that compares to 44% of our production during the same period last year. I just want to reemphasize that, 49% year-to-date this year; 44% last year.

In short, meetings are getting larger and larger, while the supply of hotels that can accommodate is not keeping pace. We like how we are positioned to capitalize on this dynamic.

And it’s no coincidence that we posted a record quarter in terms of advanced group bookings racking up 607,000 gross group room nights, which is in fact 25% year-over-year increase.

And this is not a one quarter phenomenon as our gross room nights bookings year-to-date through the end of the third quarter are up 16% as compared to the same time last year. I’ll also add here that these numbers exclude the sales production for the Gaylord Rockies which I’ll discuss in a second.

Driven by the volume of group bookings we have added over the past year, we ended the third quarter with approximately 450,000 more group room nights on the books for all future years than we did at the same point last year.

And to remind you, as of September 30, 2016, we had a total of 5.4 million net group room nights on the books for our four big hotels for all future years. Now, the number of room nights on the books at the end of the third quarter this year is the most room nights for all future years that we’ve since before the financial crisis.

Now let’s take a moment to discuss the Gaylord Rockies. During the third quarter, we booked 104,000 gross of advanced room nights, bringing the year-to-date production to 230,000 room nights on the books.

Of the 104,000 room nights we booked in the third quarter, 84% of these bookings are new to the state of Colorado and over half were multiyear contracts, while 24% new to Gaylord Hotels. So, the early indications are that the project will provide significant benefits to the states -- to state tourism growth as well as to our business.

Now, as any of you who’ve maybe recently flow into DIA will have seen, you can’t help but notice the incredible activity happening at our property there about a mile from DIA.

We remain very excited about this investment and opportunities it is represents for the Gaylord Hotels brand as well as our long-term growth and ability to drive great returns for our investors.

In terms of how we’re thinking about the upcoming fourth quarter bookings, our lead volumes are up as of the end of September by about 19% over last year which bodes well for us as we head into historically our strongest bookings quarter of the year.

However, while we expect the quarter to be very strong, we believe the overall production will be flattish to slightly down compared to the tremendous fourth quarter of last year as well as the strong year-to-date production so far in 2016, and that fact that last year’s fourth quarter was also a record booking performance.

Now, let me go off through it for a second because as I was walking in here I just got the preliminary production numbers for October. And we obviously have to go through some validation processes here.

And I am not going to share the numbers with you but I think it’s clear to say that the October production also showed very good growth over last year. In terms of RevPAR for the fourth quarter, as I said on past calls, our expectation is, that will be flat to slightly down compared to a year ago period.

As with bookings growth, this is a function of the tough comparison to the very strong performance we had in the fourth quarter of 2015, when you may recall, we delivered 9.1% RevPAR growth over the fourth quarter of 2014.

We enter the fourth quarter of this year with about 14,000 less group room nights on the books than we had at the same time last year in large part triggered by the shift in the Jewish holidays. All that being said, we expect leisure transient business to continue to perform well.

Early signs around sales of our holiday packages have also been encouraging, and it’s worth noting that leisure transient business year-to-date has been outpacing group from a RevPAR growth perspective 4.9% transient versus 4.6% up group. Now looking into 2017, our group bookings continue to trend at about the same as 2016 did at this time last year.

However, given our recent pool expansions at the Palms, the opening of the MGM Casino in early December, and the ballroom in Washington will open in early spring next year, we believe 2017 is setting up to be a solid year for our Company. And of course I’ve talked about how 2018 and beyond is tracking.

Finally, I want to turn to some of the investments we are working on that we believe will have an important impact on our business as we look to the future and take advantage of the opportunities in the large group segment that I talked about earlier.

Starting at the Texan, our expansion of 300 new guest rooms and 86,000 square feet of meeting space is currently underway and on track to open in 2018.

We’ve been very pleased with the sales efforts and bookings attributable to this expansion, many of which are associated with larger meetings that would not have booked at our hotel without these additional guest rooms and meeting space.

Moving onto the National, as I mentioned, we are building a world class ballroom on the banks of the Potomac that we expect to be open in May of 2017.

This project is generating healthy new demand and the bookings that we have received so far are in line without expectations for this project, and we we’re excited about this project’s potential to continue to attract new customers to the Gaylord National.

Now sticking with National Harbor, many of you’ve seen the announcement that MGM is scheduled to open its doors to guests on or around December the 8th, just in time for the holidays.

In fact, earlier this month MGM stated they believe that ones the casino opens, National Harbor will likely go from handling about 90,000 cars per week to 180,000 cars per week. Now, this is a staggering number and I suspect bussing will also occur to this casino.

We believe this project will provide meaningful lift for our business in this market, particularly for leisure transient customers.

That said, the next couple of months will provide valuable insight into what the direct impact will be for our hotels in National Harbor, and we’ll take this into account as we are providing 2017 guidance ranges that we do in early February next year.

And of course, I’ve already mentioned the status update on Gaylord Rockies, and we’ll have several new investments to share on the entertainment side of our business in the near future as well. Now that brings us to sort of the final part of my remarks, which is I want to touch on our entertainment segment.

During the third quarter, revenue for this segment was up nearly 10% and profitability was also up materially with adjusted EBITDA improving 28.5% to $11.8 million for the quarter.

And please keep in mind that our third quarter adjusted EBITDA last year was negatively impacted by about $1 million of cost related to the one time work with outside advisors and consultants as we began to shape the broader strategy for this business.

So, this contributed to the larger year-over-year growth for the quarter, backing that out the growth will still be materially higher than the revenue growth. But beyond just the strong numbers, this is an extremely exciting for this business and there is a lot happening.

Last week, we released more details on the Opry City Stage’s four-storey restaurant, bar and entertainment complex we have on the development in Times Square that was announced last March.

Once it opens next April, Opry City Stage will put the best of Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry in front of tens of millions of annual visitors who come to Times Square each year from around the world. This venue will immerse visitors in southern cuisine a full slate of live country music and Opry theme programming plus a retail offering.

Now, in addition, we are particularly excited about our licensing arrangement that we’ve entered into with Nashville-themed songwriters’ epicenter, the Bluebird Cafe.

Through this relationship, we’ll put the Bluebird’s unique style of live entertainment into a listening room on the top floor of this complex to showcase country music and multi-talented singers, songwriters. We believe this unique style of entertainment will give our guests a truly special glimpse of what happens in music city on a nightly basis.

We believe there is great potential to put an Opry City Stage in major tourist markets throughout the country and potentially around the world as we seek to grow the Opry brand and induce more demand for Nashville and Nashville-based attractions, and the digital platform we were working hard on.

And when you think about the opportunities we have before us with our entertainment assets, they all compound the growing awareness but not just our brands but the brands of Nashville as a true international tourist destination.

We are highly confident that there is a unique value proposition here, and we continue to invest time and resources in getting the strategy and the sequence to growth right in order to maximize the value of these assets. Now, let me just make one last comment and that is regards guidance.

This being a couple of investors that have called this morning to say no reference to guidance in the earnings release. And I think one analyst sort of questioned whether we were going to change the guidance in the script.

When we don’t reference guidance in the earnings release, it’s because guidance is unchanged, and we would not change guidance in the script and not put it out formally to the investors. So, our guidance that we put in place or I think slightly modified three or four months back is unchanged for the rest of this year.

So, in summary, both of our businesses are performing and our positioned extremely well despite what many are describing as a fairly tepid economic climate. I wouldn’t trade our hotel position today for any other REIT with strong group bookings and little supply growth in our sector.

And we are actively looking for opportunities to make prudent investments in our hotel properties to fully capitalize on the favorable trends we see. The same is true for our entertainment business as Nashville and country music continue their robust journey.

This is a very exciting time for our Company and we look forward to keeping you all informed of our progress. Now, I’ll turn over to Mark..

Mark Fioravanti President, Chief Executive Officer & Director

Good morning. Thank you, Colin. Good morning, everyone on the call. In the third quarter, the Company generated total consolidated revenue of $271.7 million, up 7.5% from the prior year quarter, and net income available to common shareholders of $33.6 million, or $0.66 per fully diluted share.

The Company grew profitability by 16.6% in the quarter generating $83 million in adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter increased 240 basis points to 30.6%. For the quarter, the Company generated $65.6 million in AFFO, or $1.18 per fully diluted share, a per share increase of 10.1% when compared to the third quarter of last year.

Turning to the hospitality segment results, the hotels finished the quarter on a same-store basis with RevPAR growth of 8.9% as compared to the prior year second quarter, while outside-the-room spending in group F&B increased total RevPAR by 7.1%. Attrition and cancellation fees collected during the quarter totaled $3.6 million.

During the quarter, attrition was flat and in the year for the year cancelations decreased by approximately 25% or 2,300 room nights year-over-year. Consolidated hospitality adjusted EBITDA grew by 14.5% to $76.9 million, generating an adjusted EBITDA margin of 31.9% or an improvement of 200 basis points over the third quarter of last year.

During the third quarter, our entertainment segment increased revenue almost 10% to $30.7 million and the segment’s third quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 28.5% to $11.8 million. Corporate and other adjusted EBITDA totaled a loss of $5.6 million in the third quarter, compared to a loss of $5.1 million in the third quarter of 2015.

Moving on to the balance sheet, as of September 30th, we had total debt of approximately $1.49 billion, net of unamortized deferred financing costs and unrestricted cash of $35.9 million, resulting in net debt outstanding of $1.45 billion, including $366.9 million of borrowings drawn under our credit facility, leaving $331.1 million of availability under the facility.

On October 14th, the Company paid its third quarter 2016 cash dividend of $0.75 per share. It’s our current plan to distribute total 2016 annual dividend of approximately $3 per share in cash in equal quarterly payments with the last quarterly payment for 2016 occurring in January of 2017.

Any future dividend is subject to the Board’s determination as to the amount and timing of the distribution. Let me close by saying that the quarter was a solid one for our Company, and we’re all extremely proud of how the business has performed, particularly against the uncertain economic and political environment that we are facing today.

As Colin outlined in his remarks, we are bullish on our long-term outlook and are confident that both our hospitality and entertainment businesses have terrific growth prospects and are uniquely well-positioned for the future. And with that, I’ll turn it over to Colin for any closing remarks..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Thanks Mark. No closing remarks. Let’s, Stephanie, open the lines for questions and look forward from hearing from some of our investors..

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Shaun Kelley with Bank of America..

Dany Asad

This is actually Dany Asad on for Shaun here. First of all, great results today. But, I just wanted to touch on, Colin, you talked about the advanced bookings and sales, and so even in your prepared remarks, you talked about increased sales expenses here.

Can you maybe help us quantify how much of the results that we saw today were -- is there any form of forward-loading or promotional activity here, or to like to get extra business into the third quarter? And especially I am asking that mostly because seeing as how you didn’t really change the full-year guidance.

So, how much of it really is timing in 3Q versus 4Q?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

No.

I am going to hand over to Patrick on this but the only impact in the third quarter that this tremendous booking production had for all future years is the commission that we pay, the incentives that we pay our people who have booked this business, and then there was $1 million more of costs in the third quarter due to business that would show up 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

So that’s how it works.

And Patrick do you want to illuminate?.

Patrick Chaffin Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer - Hotels

Yes, just to add on to that. There is not really a retiming. We expect the fourth quarter to be a very productive quarter for us in terms of sales production for group as it historically has been. And so, we’ve not adjusted downward our expense in the fourth quarter.

We just had to endure additional cost in the third quarter, which as Colin has talked about in the past, a good problem to have. .

Dany Asad

Got it. And then may be on a different topic for your entertainment segment.

What kind of capital commitment should we be expecting for the Times Square investment? And maybe as a follow-up, do you feel like you need to grow the entertainment business overall a little bit more before considering other strategic alternatives?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Yes. Let me say this, the capital expenditure in Times Square will be -- we’re doing this on a 50-50 JV, will be less than $5 million, somewhere between $4 million and $5 million.

And I am counting on that at the moment between 4 and 5, because we are trying to figure out very important but -- complicated but important things like the sounds systems of this venue and how it connects to the Grand Ole Opry directly.

But in terms of your broader question, and obviously this is a question that get asked every meeting, and I am going to give you the same answer that we give at every meeting. There are two components. If we make a decision to spin this business, there are two components that we believe are critical to the success of that.

One is the clarity of the strategy and two the growth rate that is taking place within the business; probably a third as well is the leadership team that we have in place at the time. Numbers one and two, we’re working very, very hard on. We’ve got multiple growth opportunities.

There are several of these growth opportunities that we’re not ready to announce publicly.

And in terms of the longer term strategy, we’re spending a lot of our time working on that as well, the venue distribution, but critically the OTT side of this that we feel will be a fabulous thing for country music, the platforms that we control here in Nashville, we’re working hard on that.

When all of those things -- when our Board believes, and our management believes that we’ve got all of those things in real strong form, then we’ll talk more definitively about the direction of the business..

Operator

Your next question is from Jeff Donnelly with Wells Fargo..

Jeff Donnelly

Colin, I think you might have just touched on some of this in your response on the Opry. But, are you at this point able to maybe talk about, in your sort of wildest dreams like how many venues you actually see in that sort of city lineup and do you think….

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

We’re not in the projection mode, Jeff. And you know why, because it will be a headline in your world-class release on us and everybody will remember that. And that will be something we’ll be discussing in perpetuity until this business is somewhere else.

But let me say this that excitement around what we’re doing in New York City, and the excitement that we’re seeing from potential other partners, lead us to the conclusion that we can do this and in multiple places.

And please remember, for all of our investors on the phone, we’re not doing this because we want to own bars and venues around the country and potentially internally in major gateway cities, we’re doing this, because we want to talk to this country lifestyle consumer group that love this space, so that when our digital platforms are ready, we’ll have the ability to pick these people up in their indigenous markets and provide them with a proposition that isn’t available today.

So, we feel that our brands are very powerful and have connectivity to consumers. And so that’s why the venue distribution piece is important. And our goal internally of course is to have multiples of these.

But Jeff you’re going to have to bear with me; we’re not going to get into the numbers, we’ll let when we’ve signed deals up and where they are and stuff like that..

Jeff Donnelly

That’s fair.

And do you contemplate doing these maybe in partnership or have you not really determined that? And just because there is sort of a I guess I’ll call it a pro-Nashville aspect to it, is there even an opportunity to get co-investment from the city, would they ever look at something like that?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Well, I am not sure we want -- and this by the way is not a slam on the city of Nashville’s government, I am -- we know that government of the city of Nashville very, very well, and it’s -- this is a very, very good government. But we don’t want government in our business.

If there are other major investors in the city that would like to be investors, we’re happy to talk to them. We’re doing the New York City in 50-50 JV with someone who understands operating in New York City.

I suspect if we were tomorrow morning announce one, and we are not going to do this by the way you know in a place like London, or Hong Kong, Tokyo, then I would suspect that we would have local partners that would operate these things. But we possess this platform that is sort out all across America and all across the world.

And that’s the opportunity and putting in it front of these markets is a really compelling notion I think..

Jeff Donnelly

And just to switch gear on bookings, you had great success on advanced bookings.

Can you maybe delve a little bit deeper and talk about just trends you’re seeing in that pipeline? For instance -- it’s not the right term, but like on a same group basis or same event basis, are you seeing events get larger or smaller in future years compared to the last instance or is the weakness that other companies are seeing in corporate transient, is it manifesting itself at all in your pipeline, there’s maybe a shift away from corporate group events to association business? I am just curious what you might be seeing..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Well, I am going to let Pat get into -- Patrick get into the detail here, but Let me say this.

Given what’s going and what’s about to happen next week and the obsession about what likely outcome is all across the country, to us after six, seven years of decent growth, it’s not surprising that the meeting planer who’s focused on the meetings the next quarter, 60 days from now is being a little more cautious.

And as we said in our scripted remarks, we’re seeing the exact opposite. And meeting planners -- and it’s not that we’re seeing a surge of association business, all of our markets, all of our customer bases, associations, corporations, the SMERF type business, we are seeing good strong demand.

And I think what’ s happening is the meeting planner is sitting there that has to have a meeting two, three, four years from now.

They know they have these annual meetings, whether they’re corporate meeting or association meetings and they are saying occupancy is compressing all across the big markets across the country; occupancy is operating almost at peak occupancy in most of the big -- most of the top 25 markets. And I’ve got a secure space, the two, three, four years out.

And remember, when they do that with us, they sign a contract. So, it’s not sort of a take lightly type of a commitment, these are massive commitments that these meeting planners are making. So, no, we are not seeing any material shift in demand in the big group side.

And do you want to add anything to that Patrick?.

Patrick Chaffin Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer - Hotels

Yes, the only thing I would add Jeff is just a reiteration of what Colin’s already said during the scripted part of the call, and that we have seen groups of a 1,000 attendees or greater growing. But to specifically answer your question, it’s really in terms of the numbers of groups.

The group sizes themselves, if you look at individual groups are pretty much consistent with what they have been running at in the past three or four years. So, the smaller groups we’ve seen slow down a little bit in the short-term, but in the long-term, the large groups continue to grow, the number of groups increases.

And we’ve discussed on the call earlier, we feel very good about 2018, 2019 and 2020, and we’re watching cautiously to see what this means for 2017. But again, we’re pacing in line with where we were at this point last year..

Operator

Your next question is from Smedes Rose with Citi..

Smedes Rose

I wanted to ask with Marriott having completed their acquisition of Starwood, are you seeing any changes at all or is that sort of a non-event for you guys, just in terms of group leads or I don’t know, other items that they may be able to bring to the table as a bigger system now?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Well, I’ll tell you what the headline is, because we ask this question every day, or Mark and I do, Patrick and the managers. But, I sort of would summarize it like this, Smedes, is business as usual.

Patrick, have you got any -- do you want make any additional comments?.

Patrick Chaffin Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer - Hotels

Yes. I would tell you that Marriot is taking this transition from our perspective in a very measured way. I think it’s one of the learnings from the Gaylord Hotels transition, to make sure that these critical systems, critical programs are brought on line in a very measured cadence and they’re not rushing anything. And so we think that’s a good thing.

I’d tell you from a leads perspective, we have not seen a decline in the leads; we’ve not seen a decline in production as evidenced by our bookings and also the comment that Colin made as far as what our October results look like.

This does create an opportunity for us from a multiyear booking perspective and that you can now do multiyear rotation by adding in a current Starwood Hotel into your rotation. So, you can put together more and more rotational solutions for meeting planners where a Gaylord Hotel might not exist today.

And then, it also creates the opportunity for us to essentially sell a large destination. So, you can take a Starwood Hotel, a Gaylord Hotel and sell them as one single destination, if the group is larger than what the Gaylord Hotel could accommodate, and those new hotels are located near one another..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

And we have plenty of those groups..

Patrick Chaffin Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer - Hotels

Yes. And so, we think that as long as the systems and programs are approached properly, the sales systems are done properly, this should create opportunities for us in the long-term..

Smedes Rose

Okay. That’s very helpful. And then, I just wanted to ask you, I’m sure you’ll provide more guidance for 2017 at some point.

But just on the CapEx front, it’s primarily the costs in 2017, I guess for projects beyond maintenance, would be associated with your expansion at the Texan, is that correct? And I think you had said that that was about $120 million project altogether?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Yes. And there will be some for Washington, the completion of the ballroom there..

Mark Fioravanti President, Chief Executive Officer & Director

We’ll finalize that; we’ll finish our investment into Rockies..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Yes, exactly..

Patrick Chaffin Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer - Hotels

And then, we just have one major project on the maintenance side, which is the renovation of the delta wing of Gaylord Opryland, which is about 1,000 rooms..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Yes, we have….

Mark Fioravanti President, Chief Executive Officer & Director

That will be in the 5%..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

That will be in the reserve..

Operator

Your next question is from Bill Crow with Raymond James. .

Bill Crow

Good morning guys, good quarter. Colin, couple of housekeeping items.

Any update on a change -- any changes to the Aurora budget or the timing of the opening?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Aurora? No, we’ve increased the number of sales people we have simply because of lead volumes. We needed more sales people to prosecute lead volumes. But overall, is it something we look at with our partner every single month? I know Patrick was in Colorado earlier this week, and no, the project is on time and so far on budget. Obviously we like that..

Bill Crow

Sure.

Any discussions going on with either that party or another party about a possible additional Ryman owned Gaylord property?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

We are having conversations on several locations. And when we got anything to talk about, we’ll talk about it..

Bill Crow

Colin, as you think about expanding the urban Opry concept, it seems like you might have excess land in Texas to do something, if you wanted to at the Texan, maybe in Orlando.

Would you do something on your own property or would you try and keep it separate just to ultimately be able to more cleanly separate the two businesses?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Bill, you ask a very good question. It really depends on what is going on around the property in question. And what I mean by that if something to on all of that land sits at the doorstep in Orlando was to happen, a material development of some kind, then clearly something like what we’re doing in New York City would be tremendous.

And particularly in the market like Orlando, if you think about it, after 9 o’clock, there is not a ton of things to do there. Most people are running around the theme parks through the day and sort of 9 o’clock the world slows down a little, apart from Pleasure Island items I supposed.

So, the answer to the question is, it really depends on what the development initiatives that are taking place at or around hotels, but it’s certainly not something that we wouldn’t consider..

Bill Crow

And one final question.

When you opened National Harbor, how many hotel rooms were in that submarket, that area and then how many are there today assuming that once we add there in the casino?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Yes. When we opened National Harbor, there were -- the Westin was there; the residence in across the street was there; and no Peterson was building the aloft that we converted to the AC. And that’s about it, and that’s what they are today, except of course, MGM which had 350 hotel rooms to accommodate the anticipated 20,000 to 25,000 people a day.

So, that is the answer to your question..

Operator

Your next question is from Chip Oat with Tradition Capital Management..

Chip Oat

Good morning. Colin, I think you answered my question about as well as you can at this time. Thank you..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Okay. Thank you..

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Andrew Berg with Post Advisory Group..

Andrew Berg

Hey guys, couple of quick questions.

One clarification with respect to New York, was that 4 million to 5 million your portion of the CapEx or that’s the JVs, entire CapEx of which you pick up a piece of it?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Andrew, it’s ours. That’s our contribution into the venture..

Andrew Berg

Okay. Second question was with respect to the bookings that you’ve been seeing, and you noticed that you’d seen a fall off in some of the smaller groups; you’ve seen a pickup in some of the larger groups, over 1,000 room nights.

What percentage of your business falls in each of those buckets, ballpark?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Here’s the way to think about our business. This is rough order of magnitude, okay? Somewhere between 75% and 80% of our business is group, somewhere in that region, depending on which hotel. 80% of that group -- of that group business is large group. So, large groups are very, very, very critical to us.

I think Patrick made the comment that -- large groups for us by the way, we count large groups 600 and above. Patrick, I think mentioned earlier that almost 50% -- or no, maybe it was me in the script, 50% of our 600,000 room night bookings that we did in the third quarter, 50% of that was a 1,000 plus. But we sort of look at large groups as 600 plus.

So, the way to think about it, 80% of that is large group, what we call star accounts. That’s the way to think about it..

Andrew Berg

And that’s 1,000 room nights or more?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

600 rooms or more..

Andrew Berg

600 rooms, okay.

And that component then that would be the small group that you alluded to that’s seeing a little bit of softness, which is not uncommon from what we are hearing across the board, any rough guess as to what percentage of your business that is?.

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

It’s pretty small. Patrick, it represents about 25,000 room nights a month that we book for small meetings, right? That’s the 10 to 300. And what we’ve seen is a decline of 5,000ish room night, somewhere in that region, 5,000 room nights. But it pales in comparison to the big stuff..

Andrew Berg

Yes. I knew it was small. I was just trying to recall what the -- how small it was. So, it’s helpful to just quantify it. Thank you..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Okay.

Any other questions?.

Operator

There are no additional questions at this time sir..

Colin Reed Executive Chairman

Okay, lovely. All right. Well, Stephanie, thank you. Investors, analysts, thank you for joining us. Good quarter. We love our positioning. And if you have any more questions, you know how to get hold of Mark, Patrick, Todd Siefert, or me. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us..

Operator

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

ALL TRANSCRIPTS
2024 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2023 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2022 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2021 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2020 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2019 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2018 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2017 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2016 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2015 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1
2014 Q-4 Q-3 Q-2 Q-1