Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. (RHP)

Executive Summary / Key Takeaways

• Ryman Hospitality has built an irreplaceable network of five of the seven largest non-gaming convention hotels in America, creating a structural moat that delivers pricing power and resilient group bookings despite macro volatility, with 2026 group rooms revenue pacing 8% ahead of prior-year levels.

• The company's 70% controlling stake in Opry Entertainment Group transforms RHP from a pure-play hotel REIT into an integrated destination platform, where Category 10 venues and the Grand Ole Opry brand drive ancillary revenue and create unique customer loyalty that traditional hotel competitors cannot replicate.

• The June 2025 acquisition of JW Marriott Desert Ridge for $865 million demonstrates management's disciplined expansion strategy, targeting properties with clear group rotation potential and value-add opportunities, funded through a balanced mix of equity and debt that maintains pro forma leverage at 4.4x.

• Near-term headwinds from Nashville hotel supply growth and macroeconomic policy uncertainty have pressured transient rates and increased group cancellations, yet the single-manager Marriott model and proactive cost management have preserved margins while the long-term group booking trajectory remains intact.

• The investment thesis hinges on whether RHP can successfully integrate Desert Ridge while executing its $1 billion capital program through 2027, as any misexecution would amplify risks from property concentration and cyclical convention demand at a time when the stock trades at a premium to traditional lodging REITs.

Setting the Scene: The Convention Hotel Specialist

Ryman Hospitality Properties, incorporated in Delaware in 2012 and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, operates as a self-advised REIT that owns a portfolio of group-oriented destination hotel assets. The company makes money through two distinct but synergistic segments: a Hospitality division comprising seven upscale resorts with over 2.7 million square feet of meeting space, and an Entertainment division anchored by iconic country music brands including the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium. This dual-structure model generates revenue from room nights, food and beverage, convention services, ticket sales, and ancillary entertainment experiences.

The hospitality industry structure favors RHP's specialization. While most lodging REITs compete across transient leisure, business travel, and group meetings, RHP has deliberately concentrated on the large-group convention market, which represents approximately 50% of its revenue. This positioning is advantageous because group business features longer booking lead times, contractual commitments, and higher ancillary spending per guest, creating more predictable cash flows than transient-dependent models. The company's Marriott-managed Gaylord properties rank among the top seven largest non-gaming convention hotels in America by indoor meeting space, giving RHP a dominant 40-50% share of this niche segment despite representing only 2-3% of the overall $200 billion U.S. lodging market.

Demand drivers for RHP's business extend beyond traditional hotel fundamentals. The group meeting market benefits from corporate America's need for in-person collaboration, association conferences that rotate annually, and leisure travelers drawn to entertainment-integrated destinations. Nashville's emergence as a global music tourism hub creates a unique tailwind, with the Grand Ole Opry putting 750,000 people through its doors annually. However, this geographic concentration also exposes RHP to localized supply shocks, as evidenced by the 3,000+ new hotel rooms that have entered the Nashville market since 2022, pressuring transient occupancy and rates at Gaylord Opryland.

Competitively, RHP occupies a distinct quadrant. Host Hotels & Resorts (HST) offers greater scale with 80,000 rooms across 77 properties but lacks RHP's convention depth and entertainment integration. Pebblebrook Hotel Trust (PEB) focuses on urban lifestyle hotels with minimal meeting space, leaving it vulnerable to remote work trends that RHP's group model mitigates. DiamondRock Hospitality (DRH) owns resort properties but cannot match RHP's 2.7 million square feet of purpose-built convention facilities. Apple Hospitality REIT (APLE) operates select-service hotels that compete only on transient rooms, not group business. This differentiation allows RHP to command RevPAR and total RevPAR indices of 141% and 195% of fair share relative to its Marriott-defined competitive set.

History with a Purpose: The Marriott Transformation

RHP's current strategic positioning traces directly to a pivotal decision on October 1, 2012, when it sold the Gaylord Hotels brand and management rights to Marriott International (MAR) for $210 million. This transaction fundamentally altered the company's trajectory, converting RHP from an operating company into a pure-play REIT that owns assets while leveraging Marriott's global distribution, sales force, and operational expertise. The $190 million allocated to management rights gets amortized over the 65-year term of the agreements, but the strategic value extends far beyond accounting treatment.

This single-manager model creates tangible competitive advantages. Marriott's 150 million loyalty members provide a built-in customer acquisition channel, while its centralized sales organization can book group business across the entire portfolio, increasing capture of national association conventions that rotate between cities. Operationally, the model drives cost efficiencies through shared services, standardized technology platforms, and bulk purchasing power that multi-manager REITs cannot replicate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this partnership enabled RHP to work with meeting planners on re-bookings rather than simply collecting cancellation fees, preserving customer relationships that competitors fractured.

The transformation also freed management to focus on capital allocation rather than daily operations. Since 2013, RHP has deployed over $2 billion in strategic acquisitions and property enhancements, including the $865 million Desert Ridge purchase in June 2025 and the $98 million Gaylord Rockies enhancement completed in 2024. This capital deployment discipline is important because it demonstrates management's ability to identify assets with clear value-creation pathways, a skill that separates successful REITs from those that destroy shareholder value through dilutive acquisitions.

Technology, Products, and Strategic Differentiation

RHP's "technology" is not software but the physical and experiential integration of its assets. The Gaylord Hotels product combines massive column-free exhibit halls, resort amenities, and entertainment programming into a self-contained destination that reduces customer need to leave the property. This drives higher outlet sales per occupied room—up nearly 13% in Q3 2025—and increases total RevPAR, which reached $413.25 at Desert Ridge and $386.27 on a same-store basis. The integration of Opry Entertainment Group creates a unique bundling opportunity, where convention attendees can add Grand Ole Opry tickets or Category 10 experiences to their room packages, generating ancillary revenue that pure-play hotel REITs cannot capture.

The Category 10 concept, launched in Nashville in November 2024 with a Las Vegas location slated for late 2026, represents RHP's attempt to productize country music fandom. The Luke Combs-themed venue costs approximately $35 million to develop and targets mid-teens unlevered IRRs, but its strategic value extends beyond direct financial returns. By creating owned-and-operated entertainment venues, RHP controls the customer experience from hotel check-in to concert exit, capturing data and driving loyalty that third-party venues cannot. This vertical integration mirrors Disney's theme park model applied to the convention hotel space.

The Southern Entertainment acquisition in January 2025 adds a national music festival production capability, creating a scalable platform for live music experiences. While Q2 2025 results showed weather-related attendance impacts, the long-term value lies in RHP's ability to produce festivals that drive regional demand for its hotels, creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem where entertainment content feeds hotel occupancy. This diversifies revenue beyond traditional hotel cycles and leverages the Grand Ole Opry brand's growing international recognition, evidenced by the September 2025 Royal Albert Hall performance that garnered 1.2 billion media impressions.

Financial Performance & Segment Dynamics

The Q3 2025 results illustrate RHP's resilient yet pressured business model. Hospitality segment revenue grew 7.2% to $500.9 million, driven entirely by the Desert Ridge acquisition, while same-store operating income declined 15.3% to $87.1 million due to cost inflation and mix shifts. This divergence reveals the underlying pressure on the core portfolio, even as management touts record total revenues at Gaylord National and Gaylord Rockies. The same-store ADR increased 2.2%, but group rooms traveled fell 6.1% as Q3 2024 benefited from unusually strong corporate group nights, while transient rooms grew 5.4% to partially offset the decline.

Entertainment segment revenue rose 10.5% to $91.6 million, but operating income fell 9.4% to $11.8 million, reflecting the investment phase in Category 10 and Southern Entertainment. This margin compression is intentional, as management builds out the platform for future growth, but it pressures near-term AFFO, which guides to $8.00-$8.38 per share for 2025. The segment's 18% contribution to total revenues for the nine-month period, up from 14% in 2024, demonstrates the strategic shift toward a more balanced business model.

The balance sheet provides strategic flexibility. With $483.3 million in unrestricted cash and $780 million available on revolving credit facilities, RHP holds nearly $1.3 billion in total liquidity against a pro forma net leverage ratio of 4.4x. This liquidity funds the $125-175 million in remaining 2025 capex and positions RHP to refinance its $625 million senior notes due May 2027 well in advance. The 88% fixed-rate debt profile, achieved through interest rate swaps, insulates the company from rate volatility that pressures peers like PEB, which carries more variable-rate exposure.

Cash flow generation remains robust, with $426 million in operating cash flow for the nine months ended September 30, 2025, driven by $401.4 million in net income before non-cash charges. However, investing activities consumed $862 million for the Desert Ridge acquisition and $252.1 million in property enhancements, resulting in negative free cash flow of -$168.6 million on a trailing twelve-month basis. This explains the 121.69% payout ratio—RHP is funding its dividend through a combination of operating cash flow and balance sheet capacity during an investment cycle, a strategy that works only if the capex generates promised returns.

Outlook, Guidance, and Execution Risk

Management's guidance for 2025 reflects cautious optimism in an uncertain environment. The narrowed AFFO range of $8.00-$8.38 per share implies modest growth despite macro headwinds, while the $772-802 million adjusted EBITDAre target represents a 6% year-over-year increase at the midpoint. This signals management's confidence that cost controls and group booking strength can offset transient weakness and entertainment investment drag.

The group pace for 2026 and 2027 remains the critical forward indicator. Same-store group rooms revenue on the books is up approximately 8% for 2026 and 7% for 2027, with ADR growth in the mid-single digits. Patrick Chaffin's commentary that two-thirds of the 2026 premium comes from rate rather than occupancy underscores the pricing power embedded in RHP's limited available inventory. With 7.9 million group room nights on the books for all future periods—the highest level in company history—RHP has effectively pre-sold a substantial portion of its capacity at premium rates, creating earnings visibility that peers like PEB, which relies on short-booking window transient business, cannot match.

Execution risks center on three areas. First, integrating Desert Ridge in a new Phoenix market where RHP lacks operational familiarity could prove more difficult than anticipated, potentially delaying the planned 5,000 square feet of office-to-meeting-space conversion. Second, the Gaylord Opryland renovation, the most disruptive phase of a $225 million multi-year capital plan, continues through 2025, with management warning of ongoing construction impact. Third, the Southern Entertainment acquisition must prove it can scale profitably beyond the seasonally concentrated Q2 festival period, where weather-related attendance issues already impacted 2025 margins.

Risks and Asymmetries

The most material risk to the thesis is property concentration. With five of seven hotels bearing the Gaylord name and Nashville representing the largest single market, RHP faces outsized exposure to localized disruptions. The 3,000+ new hotel rooms that have entered Nashville since 2022 have already compressed transient rates, and the upcoming 16-gate terminal expansion at Nashville International Airport, while long-term positive, will bring additional supply online through 2029. This could erode the 141% RevPAR index RHP currently achieves, particularly if convention demand softens and the company must compete more aggressively for transient guests.

Cyclical convention dependence represents a second key risk. While group bookings for 2026-2027 appear healthy, the 11,000 increase in same-store in-the-year-for-the-year cancellations in Q3 2025, attributed to macroeconomic uncertainty, signals vulnerability. If corporate America enters a prolonged recession, association budgets get cut, or government meeting spending is curtailed, RHP's 50% group revenue exposure could pressure margins more than peers like APLE, whose select-service model proves more resilient during downturns. The company's experience during COVID-19, where it collected cancellation fees and re-booked groups, provides a template for mitigation, but a severe cyclical downturn would still test the model's durability.

Integration risk for Desert Ridge is immediate and quantifiable. Management explicitly warned that "integrating JW Marriott Desert Ridge may be more difficult, costly or time consuming than expected," and that "Phoenix, Arizona is a new market for us." If the property fails to achieve the 8-10% revenue uplift implied by management's rotation strategy, the $865 million investment—funded with $275.5 million in equity issuance that diluted shareholders—could destroy value. This risk is amplified by RHP's relative unfamiliarity with the Phoenix market's demand patterns and competitive dynamics, where Host Hotels & Resorts already operates several large convention properties with established customer relationships.

On the asymmetry side, successful execution of the entertainment strategy could unlock substantial value not captured in traditional hotel REIT valuations. If Category 10 Nashville and the upcoming Las Vegas location achieve the mid-teens IRRs management targets, and if Southern Entertainment scales to a national festival platform, the entertainment segment could contribute 25-30% of EBITDA by 2027, justifying a valuation premium. Additionally, any resolution of macro uncertainty could release pent-up group demand, accelerating bookings for 2027 and beyond beyond current 7% growth rates.

Valuation Context

At $91.72 per share, RHP trades at an enterprise value of $9.43 billion, representing 12.92x trailing EBITDA and 3.79x revenue. These multiples command a premium to traditional lodging REITs: Host Hotels trades at 10.68x EBITDA and 2.88x revenue, while DiamondRock trades at 10.29x EBITDA and 2.51x revenue. The premium reflects RHP's unique entertainment integration and group booking moat, but also leaves little margin for error if execution falters.

Cash flow metrics provide a more nuanced picture. RHP's price-to-operating cash flow ratio of 9.75x compares favorably to Host's 9.26x, suggesting the market recognizes RHP's cash generation quality despite higher leverage. The 5.00% dividend yield exceeds Host's 4.66% and DRH's 3.70%, but the 121.69% payout ratio—funded partly through balance sheet capacity during an investment cycle—signals the dividend is secure only if capex generates promised returns. The debt-to-equity ratio of 3.42x is substantially higher than Host's 0.83x and DRH's 0.75x, reflecting RHP's acquisition-driven growth strategy and creating interest rate sensitivity that peers with lower leverage avoid.

Relative to its own history, RHP's current 12.92x EBITDA multiple sits at the high end of its typical 10-13x range during periods of stable group demand. The stock trades at 7.53x book value, a significant premium to Host's 1.78x and DRH's 1.14x, reflecting the market's valuation of RHP's intangible entertainment assets and brand equity. For investors, the key question is whether the entertainment platform and convention moat justify this premium, or whether the stock has priced in perfect execution of the Desert Ridge integration and capital program.

Conclusion

Ryman Hospitality Properties has engineered a unique position at the intersection of large-scale convention hotels and country music entertainment, creating a platform with durable competitive advantages and multiple expansion pathways. The company's dominant share of the non-gaming convention market, combined with a forward group booking pace that has reached all-time highs, provides earnings visibility that traditional lodging REITs cannot match. The integration of Opry Entertainment Group adds a growth vector and customer loyalty mechanism that transcends typical hotel cycles.

However, this differentiated strategy comes with concentrated risks. Property-level exposure to Nashville's supply surge, cyclical vulnerability to corporate meeting budgets, and execution risk on the $865 million Desert Ridge acquisition create potential downside if management's assumptions prove optimistic. The stock's premium valuation—trading at 12.92x EBITDA versus 10-11x for peers—leaves minimal margin for error.

For long-term investors, the thesis hinges on two variables: successful integration of Desert Ridge with minimal disruption to the 2026 group booking trajectory, and the entertainment segment's ability to scale beyond its current 18% revenue contribution. If RHP can deliver on both, the combination of convention moat and entertainment upside justifies a premium multiple. If either falters, the concentration risks and elevated leverage could pressure the stock toward traditional lodging REIT valuations, representing 15-20% downside from current levels. The next 12-18 months will prove whether RHP's unique model can deliver on its promise of superior, sustainable growth.