Ryman Hospitality Properties (NYSE: RHP) has agreed to acquire Grande Lakes Orlando Resort for $1.38 billion from Trinity Investments, the Nashville-based REIT announced on August 10, adding one of Florida's premier luxury convention destinations to a portfolio already anchored by large-scale group-oriented resorts.
The 409-acre complex encompasses two full-service hotels — a 1,010-room JW Marriott and a 582-room Ritz-Carlton — plus a Greg Norman-designed 18-hole championship golf course. Marriott International will continue to operate both properties under their existing brand flags, preserving the management continuity that institutional buyers in the lodging REIT sector typically seek. The purchase price equates to a 12.5x multiple on the property's trailing-twelve-month Adjusted EBITDAre through June 30, 2026.
Why It Matters
For the food-and-beverage and hospitality supply chain, a transaction of this scale carries meaningful downstream implications. Grande Lakes Orlando houses multiple restaurant and banquet outlets across both hotel brands, and a change in ownership at the REIT level frequently precedes capital-improvement cycles that touch kitchen infrastructure, catering capacity, and on-property food-and-beverage programming. Convention-oriented resorts of this profile — blending luxury guestrooms with large-format meeting space and resort amenities — represent some of the highest per-attendee food-and-beverage spend in the group segment, a dynamic that has made Ryman's existing Gaylord Hotels portfolio a significant operator in institutional catering and banquet foodservice.
Ryman has built its business model around capturing that group-meeting demand, operating Gaylord Opryland, Gaylord Texan, Gaylord National, and Gaylord Palms alongside its Nashville entertainment assets. Adding Grande Lakes extends the company's geographic reach into the Orlando convention corridor, one of the country's most competitive markets for large-group events and trade-show business. The combined 1,592 keys at Grande Lakes represent a material increase in room-night capacity for group bookings that generate ancillary food-and-beverage revenue.
Outlook and Accretion
Ryman expects the acquisition to be accretive to Adjusted Funds from Operations per diluted share beginning in 2027, the first full year of ownership. The company did not disclose financing structure or a projected closing date in its initial announcement. Investors in lodging REITs and foodservice operators that supply convention properties will be watching for capital-investment plans that often accompany ownership transitions of assets at this price point. For context on how large resort consolidation is reshaping group hospitality, see our earlier coverage of convention-resort investment trends and luxury hotel food-and-beverage strategy.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
