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Ryman Hospitality Properties Inc (RHP 1.59%)
Q4Â 2018 Earnings Conference Call
Feb. 26, 2019, 11:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
See all our earnings call transcripts.
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Welcome to Ryman Hospitality Properties Fourth Quarter 2018 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 4544935. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. And 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 & 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 update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or any other reason.
We will 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 -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Scott. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. Well, another record year is in the books for our Company as we exited 2018 with a flourish, opening two of the most exciting investments in our history in December, the Gaylord Rockies and SoundWaves at Opryland. We started the year on a similar note by opening the Gaylord Texan expansion in May and beginning work on our Gaylord Palms expansion. And of course it was an equally exciting year for our entertainment segment as we opened Ole Red Nashville and announced two more Ole Reds in Gatlinburg and Orlando, and by the way, as all of this was going on, we set yet another record for full year revenue and adjusted EBITDA for our Company, while also bookings record fourth quarter rooms production for our hotels.
And the most exciting thing is, there's a lot more -- lots more to come, and 2019 and 2020 are shaping up really well. But first let's talk about our fourth quarter for a moment. Now we told you in November that we expected low single-digit RevPAR and total RevPAR growth in Q4 for our hospitality segment and we came up a bit shy of that with RevPAR up 0.03% and total RevPAR slightly down at 0.7%. Now this shortfall was not group-driven. Group remains in great shape and we'll talk about that in a short while when we get to our bookings performance.
Instead, it was the less predictable portion of our business, which is the leisure transient segment over the holidays, primarily in December that came up a tad short of our expectations. Now, you will recall that the nation ran into a rather abrupt stock market decline in December. From the markets close on Monday, December 3rd through Christmas Eve on the 24th, the S&P fell 15.7% as the looming government shutdown finally went into effect on the 22nd. No doubt, this was on many consumers minds going into the holiday. Now, I'm pleased to say the markets have subsequently recovered in January and February.
Now what is interesting and what makes us feel good about how our business performed is that the weakness we saw in holiday transient was most pronounced at the Palms in Orlando and when we dug into the data there, we found that while the Orlando market as a whole had a very difficult December for transient, the Palms itself performed very well on a relative basis. The Palms actually grew its RevPAR index in the month of December by over 6% against its competitive set. In fact, all of our hotels grew their RevPAR market share in that month and at Opryland in December, while some of our specific Christmas orientated programs performed a bit from below expectations, we were very pleased with the leisure transient response through our opening of the indoor portion of SoundWaves and I think Patrick will talk a little bit about that in the Q&A section.
I can tell you that the room nights associated with the SoundWaves packages and package tickets sold in December exceeded our internal plan. So aside from a holiday period blip in our leisure business, the rest of the fourth quarter for our most important segment, that is our group business, went very well and essentially in line with our expectations. And of course for the full year '18 , we delivered RevPAR growth of 2.9% and total RevPAR growth of 4%, which is comfortably within the ranges we've provided all year and certainly at the top end of our industry.
And at the end of the day what matters most is profitability and our hotels responded very well, delivering full year adjusted EBITDA for our same-store hotels of $375 million or 43% flow through for the year and above the midpoint of our expectations. So we are very pleased with the execution of our hotels in the fourth quarter and their ability to deliver on the visibility of our group book of business across the Gaylord brand and that group business, the engine of economic model, remains in tremendous shape.
Now just recently Star published their latest 2018 year-end hotel industry performance presentation and the most important data point in there for us was the 12-month moving average of group demand. According to Star, after middling along sort of flat for most of '17 and the first couple of months of '18, there was a clear and pronounced upward trend in overall group demand across the country in the last nine months of 2018. Group demand went from about a 1% year-over-year decline at the start of 2018 to a solid 2% year-over-year growth rate exiting the year and as Star titled in their slide, group demand growth is finally real and really strong.
Now of course this didn't surprise us because we've seen continued evidence of this in our production numbers over the last several years. With demand growing in this segment coupled with very little new supply and a portfolio of world-class convention hotels all under one umbrella, the outlook for us looks very rosy. Now to illustrate this, in the fourth quarter, excluding the Gaylord Rockies, our same-store hotels booked 1,053,000 gross room nights in contract form. Now this was 85,000 room night increase over Q4 '17 and yet another clear fourth quarter record for our Company by a comfortable margin.
And that is not just due to our Texas expansion that we opened mid year, because we have been selling those rooms now for the past two years. Now that doesn't put a fine point on the health of that business. Let me state it another way and give you a preview of how well '19 and '20 are pacing. At the start of '19, once again on a same-store basis excluding the Rockies, we had over 1 more full points of net occupancy on the books for the coming year than we did at the start of '18. Now that translated to about 3.4% more net room nights and 4.5% more net rooms revenue than '18 started with.
Our hotel pace for '20 looks even better. As of December 31, 2018, again on a same-store base to excluding the Rockies, we had 4 more points of net occupancy and 10% more net rooms revenue on the books for T plus 2 or 2020 than we did one year ago for 2019. Right now for all future years combined and still excluding the Rockies, we have 6.7 million net group room nights on the books, a 7% increase over the same time last year, which of course is a consequence of the tremendous bookings that we accomplished in 2018.
Now in addition, the Gaylord Rockies alone generated 122,000 gross room nights in Q4 and 389,000 for the year. On December 31, the Rockies had over 1.2 million net group room nights on the books for all future years. Now that is certainly a record for any Gaylord hotel at the time of opening and possibly the largest for any hotel of a comparable size. Now in terms of pacing, the Rockies entered '19 with 51.6% net occupancy points on the books and a stunning 56% net occupancy points on the books for 2020.
Now let me emphasize that statistic one more time. As of December 31, '18, the Rockies have meaningfully more net occupancy on the books for 2020, two years out, than our hotels typically have in December for the upcoming year. The Gaylord Rockies in Colorado is a game changer for this region and its booking patents for the next couple of years is a reflection of that. In short, our hospitality business is in great shape and we have much more to come and investments under way to continue serving our loyal group customers who make these hotels so successful.
Now before we finish talking about the fourth quarter and move on to our guidance and investment update, let me also tell you how our entertainment business performed in the quarter. 2018 was an equally momentous year for this business led by the opening of our flagship Ole Red with Blake Shelton, which has been a great hit downtown Nashville and stood (ph) as to announce the next two locations in Gatlinburg and Orlando. Total revenue in our entertainment segment grew 18.8% in the fourth quarter and adjusted EBITDA grew 11.3%. Excluding Ole Red and Opry City Stage, our core Nashville entertainment assets and attractions grew revenue in the fourth quarter by a solid 7% and adjusted EBITDA by 16%.
We made the decision in the fourth quarter that to reposition the suspended Opry City Stage concept to New York City would be too costly and distracting given the limits of the space. Therefore, given the early success of Ole Red, we have refocused our efforts and our new senior leadership in the entertainment business toward ensuring the continued success of this concept and of the investments we're making at the Opry House in terms of expanding retail, tourists and VIP experiences. And we have some other exciting projects in the works for our entertainment business around content and other areas, so stay tuned.
Now let us close the books on '18 and talk about another exciting year that is shaping up to be yet another record for our Company and that of course is this year 2019. First, given our advance book of business for our same-store hospitality segment, excluding the Rockies, we expect another good year of RevPAR and total RevPAR growth in the range of 1.5% to 3.5% for RevPAR and 2% to 4% for total RevPAR. We expect our same-store hotels, excluding the Rockies, to deliver $390 million to $400 million of adjusted EBITDAre.
Now, note that I've referenced an adjusted version of the new NAREIT metric EBITDAre when talking about guidance. In '19, we'll begin to report both as new EBITDAre according to NAREIT's definition as well as making our usual adjustments to arrive at what we will call adjusted EBITDAre. Adjusted EBITDAre is substantially identical to the former adjusted EBITDA except that it includes a 100% of any consolidated joint ventures such as the Rockies. Of course, since the Rockies was not majority owned or consolidated last year, there is really no difference between adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDAre for our historical 2018 results.
Now back to guidance, beyond our same-store hotels, we expect Gaylord Rockies to contribute an additional $77 million to $83 million of adjusted EBITDAre to our hospitality segment in 2019. That figure includes the incentive rebates from local authorities. And as I mentioned, it is the 100% consolidated figure, not a pro rata share -- not pro a pro-rata share. Combined, this implies $467 million to $483 million of total hospitality segment adjusted EBITDAre, including 100% of the Gaylord Rockies.
For our entertainment business, we expect $45 million to $50 million of adjusted EBITDAre in 2019. That is over 25% growth, which is a mix of several changes as we removed the headwinds of Opry City Stage, a pickup the full year of Ole Red Nashville and a partial year of the Ole Red Gatlinburg on top of solid continued growth in our core Nashville businesses.
Finally, in our corporate segment, we expect adjusted EBITDAre loss of $26 million to $28 million. This results in a consolidated adjusted EBITDAre for our Company in the range of $484 million to $507 million for 2019. Now for those of you who prefer to think about the Rockies contribution purely on pro rata basis and I'm in that camp, that figure translates to an adjusted EBITDAre, excluding minority interest, of $454.8 million to $475.5 million.
Now, I suppose it doesn't really matter how you look at our projections for the next year. We see good growth throughout our Company and 2019 should be a great year, and in turn, quite different from many of those companies the investment community tends to compare us with.
Now let me give you a quick brief update on the progress of our investment activity before I conclude. A major hotel project still under way is the 300-room Gaylord Palms expansions that includes a 30,000 square foot ballroom, 30,000 square feet of breakout meeting space and a new covered parking garage. This project remains on track to open around the middle of 2021 and we expect it to maintain the Palms' competitive position in the Orlando group market for years to come.
At the start of my remarks, I highlighted the successful opening of the indoor portion of SoundWaves at Opryland in December, and the very positive leisure response we have seen. We remain on track to open the outdoor portion in May of this year and our group marketing efforts are well under way. In Denver, we'll be hosting the official grand opening ceremonies for Rockies this coming weekend and maybe we'll see some of you, following the soft opening that we did this past December. We concluded the announced acquisition of an incremental 26% of Gaylord Rockies on December 31st, which bought our current ownership up to 61.2% today.
We expect to complete the second closing of our transaction with our partners in July of 2019, which will lead us to acquiring about an additional 0.9% at that time. And finally, for our hotel business in Dallas, our Gaylord Texan expansion is approaching its one-year anniversary in May and we've been, to say the least, very pleased on how the venue (inaudible) has performed in its inaugural year and how our sales production has taken up this new capacity.
Now moving to our entertainment section, our Ole Red Gatlinburg is on budget and on pace to open in a couple of weeks. And Ole Red Orlando is likely -- likewise on budget and on pace to open a year behind in 2020. Our VIP retail and tour enhancements at the Opry House are moving along quickly and we expect to see them complete late this summer.
In conclusion, just like '18 our plate is full for '19 and we look forward to another great year of investing in and delivering the premium experiences that our group and leisure hotel guests and our entertainment customers have come to expect.
Now finally, at this time of the year, I'd also like to translate our investing and operating success into the tangible benefits it generates for our shareholders by calling your attention to the dividend increase that our Board approved today. Once again, given the operating performance of our business as well as outlook, we were able to increase our quarterly payout by $0.05 per share, a 5.9% increase. This is why we do what we do to deliver great experiences to our customers and rewards to our employees, our loyal shareholders and the communities we do businesses.
And with that, I'll turn the call over to Mark to give you more color on Q4 and the outlook for 2019.
Mark Fioravanti -- President and Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone. In the fourth quarter of 2018, the Company generated total revenue of $360.6 million, up 4.5% from the prior year. For full-year 2018, total revenues increased 7.6% to $1.28 billion. Net income available to common shareholders increased 120% in the fourth quarter to $159.2 million and increased 50% for the full year to $264.7 million. The large increase in net income is the result of a $131 million gain the Company recognized in the fourth quarter of 2018 on our purchase of an increased interest in the Gaylord Rockies. This purchase effectively mark-to-market our previous equity investment in the joint venture at the newly established valuation for the completed hotel. This appears in the income from joint ventures line where it is partially offset by the small operating loss of the Gaylord Rockies that occurred prior to our majority acquisition. This gain was also partly offset by impairment charges, which were primarily associated with the write-off of our remaining investment in Opry City Stage.
Now moving on to our non-GAAP metrics, the Company generated $108.7 million of adjusted EBITDA on a consolidated basis in the fourth quarter, a 2.3% increase over last year. This translated to an adjusted EBITDA margin decline of 70 basis points in the fourth quarter. In the hospitality segment, fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA flow through was impacted by year-over-year decline of approximately $700,000 in Gaylord National bond interest and a year-over-year decline of approximately $800,000 in attrition and cancellation revenue, which have been favorable last year due to the timing of receipt of two large cancellation fees.
The balance of the margin headwind in hospitality was higher sales commissions given the terrific production in the quarter, the year-over-year increase in incentive management fee and increased labor cost due to wage increases especially in Nashville and Orlando. We expect some additional modest upward pressure on wages in these markets in 2019 and this expectation is reflected in the guidance we provided for the year.
For the full year, consolidated adjusted EBITDA increased 7.7% to $388.8 million with consolidated full year margin flat at 30.5%. Note that in the hospitality segment despite the fourth quarter headwinds just mentioned, full-year 2018 adjusted EBITDA margin was up 50 basis points, which is favorable to the 20 basis point increase we laid out in our guidance a year ago. So we're very pleased with how our assets performed and delivered on this goal in 2018.
In terms of AFFO, the Company generated $84.7 million in the fourth quarter on a consolidated basis, a 2.6% decrease over the fourth quarter of 2017 or $1.64 on a fully diluted per share basis. This modest decrease in AFFO compared to the increase in adjusted EBITDA in the quarter is due primarily to the higher interest expense driven by the additional capital that we've deployed in the growth projects that were not yet contributing to our operating income in the period. For the full year, the Company generated $301.8 million in AFFO, a 5.7% increase over full-year 2017 and equivalent to $5.86 per fully diluted share.
Moving on, both attrition and cancellations in the fourth quarter were down. Attrition fell 10 basis points for the quarter and was flat for the full year. Cancellations were down over 51% in the quarter and over 38% for the full year. As Colin emphasized, our group business is strong and we saw no patterns or areas of concern in our attrition and cancellation data.
In terms of our balance sheet, as of December 31, we had total debt of approximately $2.4 billion, net of unamortized deferred financing costs and unrestricted cash of $103.4 million, resulting in net debt outstanding of $2.34 billion. The increase in our total debt in the fourth quarter reflects our overall increased investment in the Gaylord Rockies.
First, we increased borrowings under our revolver by $255 million sequentially in the fourth quarter, primarily to close the acquisition of a majority interest in the hotel and second, at the close of the year, given our new majority ownership, we took the then outstanding construction debt onto our balance sheet, which totaled $497 million. Again, that is 100% of the property's debt, not our pro rata 61.2% share. The Company's available liquidity at year-end, combining capacity under the revolver and unrestricted cash on hand, was approximately $276 million.
Turning to guidance, Colin provided the highlights of what we expect to be another great year for our group business and another record for revenue and profitability for our Company. I will just add some additional color on how we expect quarterly pace to play out. We expect all four quarters to be positive in terms of RevPAR and total RevPAR growth with the strongest quarters for both measures in the first and third based on our current book of group business. We expect the fourth quarter to be the weakest in terms of year-over-year growth at around flat to low single-digits for RevPAR. We expect total RevPAR growth to exceed RevPAR growth in all four quarters.
Colin provided cue with the ranges for our adjusted EBITDAre guidance by segment and for the Company as a whole and he explained the new use of this metric for 2019, so I will jump straight to our FFO and AFFO guidance for the year. While EBITDAre and and adjusted EBITDAre will both be fully consolidated measures, we will continue to report FFO and AFFO in terms of what funds are available on RHP common shareholders. In other words, these measures will continue to reflect only our pro rata share of the ownership in the Gaylord Rockies.
On that basis, we expect FFO available to common shareholders for 2019 in the range of $305.8 million to $323.6 million and AFFO available to common shareholders of $330.6 million to $349.6 million. At the midpoint of our guidance, this represents a year-over-year growth rate of 12.6% in AFFO for 2019. You will note that our fully diluted share count estimate for 2019 of 52.1 million shares is 600,000 shares higher than the average diluted shares in 2018. The majority of this increase reflects the potential dilution if our minority partners in the Gaylord Rockies exercised their put right to sell to the Company their small residual interest in the JVs for units in our REIT (ph) operating partnership, which are then convertible one for one into our common shares.
This right cannot be exercised until the third quarter at the earliest. And if were exercised, the Company of course would acquire an additional economic interest in the Rockies. So just be aware, for those of you who look at these measures on a per share basis that the potential impact of this put right is incorporated in the denominator of our share count guidance but not in the numerator, our FFO available to common and AFFO available to common shareholders guidance. A detailed reconciliation of our current guidance from net income to all non-GAAP measures can be found in the supplements scheduled to the earnings release.
And with that, I'll turn it back over to Colin for any closing remarks.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Mark. With a lot of detail there with all of the projects we've got going on, the changes to the reporting standards with EBITDAre and of course dealing with the full year and guidance. So let's open up the -- Lori, if we could, let's open up the calls for any questions and move this along.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Chris Woronka of Deutsche Bank.
Chris Woronka -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Hey, good morning guys and congratulations on the successful opening of the Rockies, also the SoundWaves. I wanted to ask you, as it pertains to the Rockies, I know you've given us a lot of data about how many new to the brand groups that hotel is bringing in, have you seen any uptick in those new to the brand groups booking at the other hotels in the portfolio?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Chris, this is Colin. We're pretty excited about what we're seeing here in Colorado. Pat, you want to get into the detail on this?
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Absolutely. Good morning, Chris. Yeah, as you have mentioned, in the past we've talked about how many are new acquisitions to the brand via the Rockies property, it's about 40% over the course of the dates that we've been booking in. Of those, about 60% of those are multiyear rotational groups. So a very large chunk of those are rotating in either from other dealer properties or coming in to Rockies and then rotating into the other hotels. So this 60% is slightly higher. We're actually little bit above 60% right now, it's slightly higher than the other hotels. So we are getting a good influx of folks who are first coming to Rockies and then choosing to go to our other hotels as well.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
And I know Patrick this weekend we've got invites (inaudible) 500 meeting planners. So there's grand opening and we expect several hundred to be there to see this hotel, which is pretty good.
Chris Woronka -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Yeah. Appreciate the color. Just another one for you, Colin, now that you've got SoundWaves open in Nashville, do you think that property is kind of strategically complete or do you give thought to maybe adding some other -- I think you've talked in the past, but maybe a little bit of alternate hotel product on site?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
The comment I would make here probably is going to come back to bite me, but I suspect with what is taking place in this Nashville market, airport expanding, more flights coming in, more people from all across the globe wanting to come here for music, my sense is that when people really start to see the SoundWaves and this hotel, last night I was -- this is just anecdotal, I was with the Head of British Air for the US -- Head of sales for the US and he was saying to me how stunned he was when he walked into Opryland for the first time and saw this hotel. And I think we're going to see a lot more of that. So my view is that probably in the next 12 to 18 months we'll be talking about more hotel product in and around this hotel to fulfill, I think, the demand curve that we are going to be seeing here.
Chris Woronka -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Okay, very good. Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Smedes Rose of Citi.
Smedes Rose -- Citi -- Analyst
Hi, thanks. I was wondering, just on the Rockies a little more, maybe you could just talk about kind of the your -- the initial opening and kind of how that went overall? It sounds like it's pretty successful. But what you're doing kind of on the transient side of the business as well?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Yes. So I would say to you, Smedes, good morning. We'll probably be seeing you next week.
Smedes Rose -- Citi -- Analyst
Absolutely.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
I would say to you that as we sit here today looking back on what occurred on the 18th of December and subsequently, this is probably been our best opening over the last 10 years and I think we genuinely are very happy with the way it's gone. We got a good management team in place. Marriott's done a really good job here and everything is moving along as we expected. And I think this hotel, it's quite extraordinary. This hotel, I feel in the first quarter -- this first quarter of 2019 is going to make a bunch of money. And this is very unusual for a big group hotel like this.
The management team seems to have its arms around the cost structure of this hotel. And the big unknown for us a year ago was how would leisure perform and I know there have been discussions about, because of the tremendous some amount of success we've had on group, should we put more hotel product here, should we increase the size of this hotel from 1,500 rooms. And what we have been saying to our partner and I think publicly when we've been asked this question is we wanted to see how leisure performs. And so with that as a backdrop, Patrick, why don't you give Smedes a little bit more color on where we are on leisure.
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Absolutely. Good morning, Smedes. Yes, just to echo what Colin's already said, the team has done a phenomenal job and we've been very encouraged by what we've seen on the transient side. Just to give you some numbers, in December alone we did about 4,800 room nights in terms of transient versus an expectation of about 2,500. So a really strong result in the very first stub period, which again was from December 18th through December 31st. And again that's a soft opening period that we used to really work out any kinks that may exist in the hotels so that we can make sure that when our group guests arrive on January 7th, which is when they started coming, the hotel was operating smoothly and efficiently.
That continued again into January, January we did about 5,000 transient room nights versus an expectation of about 3,000. We've been yielding up on transient rate and we're encouraged by what we've seen thus far. So a good soft opening, good transient response. Again on the group side as Colin's already talked about, we opened with 1.2 million room nights on the books. So on the group side, things are going very well. We've had a couple of full house groups in-house already and the feedback has been very positive.
Smedes Rose -- Citi -- Analyst
Great, thanks. And then I was just wondering, Mark, you mentioned that your guidance includes wage increases for the year. What exactly -- what sort of percentage are you assuming across the portfolio?
Mark Fioravanti -- President and Chief Financial Officer
It varies by property.
Smedes Rose -- Citi -- Analyst
Right, but across the portfolio?
Mark Fioravanti -- President and Chief Financial Officer
Yes, across the portfolio, it's going to run probably about 4%.
Smedes Rose -- Citi -- Analyst
Great. Thank you, guys.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Smedes.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Bill Crow of Raymond James.
William A. Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Good morning, folks. Colin, I've got three or four and hopefully we can do very quickly. But any pre-opening cost for the Rockies in this weekend, weekends event in your embedded in your G&A?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
In our G&A of corporate, no, only the cost of us -- the cost of -- I don't know, how many people from corporate, probably 10 people, Patrick, that said going, but the hotel had planned this event two years ago. So the performer that we have on Saturday night and the meeting planners in the rooms and the food and beverage, that's all embedded in the pre-opening budgets that we had put in place.
William A. Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. It looks like Lincoln Property is set to kick off some development on your land in Nashville. Can you talk about your participation and maybe your investment in the development of that 900 plus acres?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Not 900 plus acres, we've got 100 and -- (multiple speakers) 120 -- 900 plus units, yes, so while we've been -- we've been really patient on this land here, Bill, because we've been watching what has been taking place here in Nashville from a development growth perspective. And as you know, we were one of the three sites that got material Amazon development here. And so we've been patient because we believe this land to be valuable. So the way this works, I think Phase 1 is about a 10 acre development. What we have done is we've rolled out real estate -- actually we're selling our real estate in Phase 1 to Lincoln.
But we are also expanding part of that money on infrastructure roadway systems within this land. And we will determine on Phase 2 and Phase 3 and Phase 4 whether we roll our real estate into the investment, depending upon what the investment is. So we think if we were to sell the real estate for the price that the first 10 acres is sort of gone for, this is about $50 million -- $45 million, $50 million real estate harvest for us. But our sense is what we want to make sure perhaps here Bill, Phase 1 is going to be apartments, but Phase 2 will be the way this thing is -- we've got it laid out with Lincoln, it's going to be office buildings and stuff like that. What we want to make sure is what goes on that land is it will contribute to the continued growth of Opryland.
William A. Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay, appreciate it. One more question from me and I apologize if I missed this earlier, but your fourth quarter was obviously softer and your forecast for the fourth quarter of '19 is flattish. Is this indicative of the challenges that Marriott is having in G&A up in the leisure transient guests and is it showing maybe the age of (inaudible)? What's going on that the fourth quarter is just struggling as you go in here?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Well, this fourth quarter was very unusual because if you recall, we did cover this in our remarks, Bill, but the fourth quarter from the beginning of December to the Christmas Eve, the market was off -- the soft market was off 15.5%, nearly 16%. And if you look at the data in the Orlando market, the Orlando market, all across that market was off materially. We actually -- it was the Orlando hotel that drove the minor discrepancy, let's not overblow this, the difference between what we thought was going to happen and what happened was relatively minor. But it was in that Orlando market and a little bit around one of the programs that ice -- not ice, one of the programs here in Nashville, which was this sub-project -- sub-program, which was, Patrick, I think the second or third year.
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Right.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
And that came in, I don't know, 15,000 less seats sold than before. And so we're looking at, what we do to change all of that, but you know our guidance -- when we do guidance for this first quarter, we always tend to be flattish for the fourth quarter simply because so much of that fourth quarter revolves around the leisure customer. And so I don't think I would read into anything about ICE! not being successful. We actually had some good ICE! numbers this year, right, Patrick?
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Yes, in fact, just to add to that, ICE! actually outperformed this year versus last year. So there was a year-over-year improvement. Yes, we are always looking for things to enhance the value proposition for transient guests coming to the properties to experience ICE! and the other offerings and we'll continue to do that as we go into 2019. To Colin's point, this was our second year of the theater show, Sirk (ph) that occurred here in Nashville. It will not repeat again in 2019. We will have a new show. So we expect some lift from that as a result. And then the other thing I would tell you is, remember that October, November and December are operating at very historic highs. I mean, 77%, 78% occupancy for the quarter. So pretty tough comps for them, but then a little bit of softness that we saw here in this fourth quarter on the transient side.
Mark Fioravanti -- President and Chief Financial Officer
Bill, just bear repeating, we grew our market share in all four markets. So this was not a specific branding.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, it's not a Marriott issue or ICE! getting tardy. And again, Bill, hate to say this but you know fourth quarter is one of our most profitable quarters and it shifts from group to leisure. So we always tend to be looking 12 months out. We always tend to look at the fourth quarter on a relatively flat basis.
William A. Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Yeah. That's helpful. I was more concerned about the '19 fourth quarter guidance and that just occurred '18 fourth quarter. That's helpful. Thank you. That's it from me.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholes of SunTrust.
Patrick Scholes -- SunTrust -- Analyst
Hi, good morning. A couple of various questions here for you. In January, have you seen any lingering impact from the government shutdown on your DC property?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
No.
Patrick Scholes -- SunTrust -- Analyst
Okay, thank you. Second is, concerning renovation disruptions at your two properties this year, are you able to quantify that at all as far as either EBITDA impact or RevPAR impact?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, Pat, do you want to take them?
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Yeah. Hey, good morning, Patrick. So we have the Magnolia corridor renovation at Gaylord Opryland, that will have about 32,000 rooms out of service. We have a light renovation sort of an interim renovation going on Gaylord National, we're just putting some new TVs and new mattresses in until we come back into the full renovation which will not start until 2020. So from Gaylord Opryland's impact, it's primarily going to be around the transient side of the business as our design and construction teams work real closely to ensure that they do minimal displacement to groups, and I will tell you actually we're going to shut down the renovation at one point to make sure that we accommodate very strong group demand during certain periods of the year. So we think that the displacement is going to be minimal.
Patrick Scholes -- SunTrust -- Analyst
Okay, thank you for the color on that. And then one last question sort of from a high level. Keep in mind we represent Wall Street, so we're never satisfied, my point being Colorado signs to be going quite nicely, what's next? What's the next big project anything going on (inaudible) where else are you thinking?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Well, the reality is you guys -- you are accurate, you are always comparing us to, you know, if you have grown X, why aren't you growing Y, we understand that, but what I would say to you is that I'm going to take this from the 60,000 foot perspective, our strategy has been to build something that is differentiated and sustainable. And that's what we've done here with this Company, and you look at our RevPAR growth for the last year '18, what we're projecting here for '19, the stuff on the books, we've got hotels that are one of a kind, and what we've been doing with these hotels is building sort of an economic fortress around each one of them.
We are going to be opening SoundWaves outdoor coming May. We've got the full year this year of the Texas, we've got the full year this year of Denver in 2020 because of the tremendous amount of business it's got on the books, we will crank up. I will tell you that we are looking at how we expand that hotel in Denver. We've got an expansion under way with the Palms with more meeting space at the Palms and then we've got all of this stuff going on in our entertainment business. But you're not going to see us go buy 500-room hotel in a market just to bring in new hotel on. We want to build and we want to own assets that are differentiated and sustainable.
And I think the strategy that we've been on here, certainly since we created the Gaylord brand has created disproportionately more returns for our shareholders than our competitors for theirs. And so we're going to be disciplined about this. Well, are we looking at Chula Vista with our partner in Denver, the answer is, of course, we are. But this is a long process, dealing in Southern California is no ride in the park and -- or a walk in the park, whatever the expression is. So, yeah, I mean we've got a lot of good things going on here and we expect to see really good growth in our Company here over the next two to three years.
And the other thing I would say to you is, we've increased our dividend here now six consecutive years and -- because of this discipline. So we've got a good two or three years ahead of us here.
Patrick Scholes -- SunTrust -- Analyst
Okay. Sounds great. Thank you.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Shaun Kelley of Bank of America.
Shaun Kelley -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Hi everyone. Colin and everyone, I think you covered a lot of the ground, but I had just one, specific one. We've heard a little bit about just staffing and wage pressure specifically in Denver, given how tight the labor market is out there and how strong the local economy is. This sort of implied and I think we're already seeing in your ramp up and Colin I think you made some comments around profitability, but just anything specifically to call out there that has been concerning to you or are these all things that are normal growing gains, but at the end of the day you're comfortable with where the asset is ramping?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Look, when you -- Shaun, this is a good question, really a good question. When you've got sort of on a national level 3% and 3.5% whatever the unemployment level is these days, it is difficult and when you're in these markets that are really high quality growth markets like Nashville, Orlando and the Denver market, it is good news, bad news. The good news is you're in markets that are growing like hell, the bad news is that you're in markets where the amount of people that are moving into these markets to be employed is a little less than the amount of demand there is for jobs in that market.
And so what we're having to do is what we've been doing for a long period of time. We've created a culture in our business that is second to none, but on the other hand -- and we treat our people -- and Marriott has done a really good job on this and in our entertainment business, we are doing a really good job on this. And we are retaining our people. But we're also having to deal with the realities of low employment and hot markets. And so, in Orlando when Disney goes to -- announces its going to $15 of an hour minimum wage, we can't stick our head in the sand, we have to deal with it and that's what we are doing. But the good news is that our forward book of business, our rate growth is more than adequate to offset these realities of low employment nation and in Denver -- you want to talk about Denver, Pat, just a little bit? It's a good question Shaun you have asked.
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Yes. The challenge in the Denver market is if you compare it to Dallas where we operate, it's a much smaller MSA. So, Dallas, Fort Worth is roughly 6.8 million people. Rockies is in the Aurora Denver MSA which is only about 2.8 million. So it's just a smaller area from which to draw labor force. We've been very pleased as we've talked about in prior calls, we've been able to pull some of the best and brightest out in the hospitality industry in that market to staff our hotel with, but the trick is, OK, we have a higher wage rate there, we have to make sure we drive better rate and I will tell you that group rate on the books at Denver is the highest across our brands. So we are having success doing that. To Colin's point on Orlando, Disney continues to move up, but then Disney is also now taking action to increase rates across their properties, which enables other hotels to do the same and that's what we're moving on, as we book future room nights for that hotel.
Here in Nashville, very popular market. We do think that wages are going to stabilize in 2019 from the pretty dramatic increases we've seen over the past few years. But again, all of that demand is helping to drive our future rate. So we're taking action to make sure we offset that with rate. National is a little bit different because it's a union environment, but the reality is we've been dealing with that since we've been open. So the wages there we've been taken in stride each year since we opened.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
And Shaun, I can't under-stress or over-stress the importance of the culture that is being created in these businesses and where we have this Star's first in our hotel business and our people first in our entertainment business and that at the end of the day when people come to work and they feel happy and loved and cared for, if everything else is equal, they are going to stay with you. And so we've spent so much time as a company trying to build this internal culture that creates this retention of our people.
Shaun Kelley -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Thanks for the color. I look forward to seeing you on Friday.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Good, thank you, I look forward to seeing you there.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Chip Ode (ph) of Tradition Capital.
Chip Ode -- Tradition Capital -- Analyst
Good morning, thank you. I have 3.5 questions I guess, you already answered half of one, first is easy, hope we'll see you at reit week in New York in early June. I think you weren't there last year and you always draw a good crowd.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Yeah, it's a shame, we're doing it the way we're doing it, but it's a shame we're not doing it at a world-class hotel, but anyway keep going.
Chip Ode -- Tradition Capital -- Analyst
Well then, you guys need to build one there, but that's probably 2025 or at least. The stock has done quite well since literally the day of the recent Amazon announcement about New York City. There's a lot of good things going on in Nashville. So you answered this part of my question about Nashville. Can you see the National Harbor Resort picking up some business just because Amazon is putting a lot of people into Northern Virginia right across the water from you?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
I mean we see over time, with Amazon doing what they're doing in that Northern Virginia market, that is going to be overall good for the underlying economics of that market, it's going to -- my sense is when a company like Amazon makes a decision to go into a city and this is not, please don't think I'm getting political here about New York City, one of the great things that we loved about Amazon coming to Nashville, it sends a signal to the planet that Nashville is relevant city when it comes to one of the great world-class companies on this globe and I think in Northern Virginia, that will catch a lot of people, the decision by Amazon will catch a lot of people's attention, and I think overall it will be good for the economic well being of that region.
So as a consequence, over time, that should be good for the National Harbor Resort and and we are quite pleased with how National Harbor is performing. This will be a good year 2000 -- Patrick, 2019 will be a good year for this hotel and we are booking a lot of forward group business into this market. If only our politicians in Washington will get back to work and create a more stabilized environment for the DC area, things will be a lot better.
Chip Ode -- Tradition Capital -- Analyst
Well, I live there. So I wouldn't count on that. Where I'm going with the question is, if we assume good things on the revenue side, are there expansion CapEx things you can do at National Harbor to maximize the profitability on that or have you done pretty much what you can do there?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
No. The -- so the hotel's occupancy is running somewhere between 70 and 75 points of occupancy. So, de facto on any given night we got 500 rooms available because we have 2,000 rooms, right, 75 points of occupancy. That's 1,500 rooms sold every night. So we have -- as the economic environment improves in that Northern Virginia DC market, we have the ability to grow profitability without touching that hotel. But on the other hand, we have a piece of land across the street where if we wanted to we could build another, I don't know, 200, 300 rooms on that piece of land, but that's not in our plans right now simply because we have -- we want to get that Washington hotel pushing 80 points of occupancy. But we have the potential to grow the profitability of that hotel fairly materially, without doing any structural change (ph).
Chip Ode -- Tradition Capital -- Analyst
Good. And last question regarding competition has two parts, part of the thesis is that they are just not building properties like yours, at least not outside Las Vegas. Is that still the case. Are you really not seeing any new construction? The second part of the question and it's my last question is, Park has stated that they are migrating or want to migrate their business model to the extent that they can toward the large conference business that you do so well. They appear to have three, maybe four properties in the Continental US that could accommodate that business model, that push. So clearly, they're going to put marketing and advertising muscle behind it. You welcome the competition, but what do you think about that?
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Well, on the competition -- on the competitive supply, you're 100% right. There is very little large hotels being built in the United States and there is also two reasons for that, structural reasons, the big C Corp's are out of the business of sponsoring this stuff and as most of the big developers like ourselves converted from a C-to a Reit. So we don't see a lot of big hotels being built. In terms of Park, I know the CEO of this company, Tom Baltimore, he's very smart, shrewd fine operator and I like him a lot. And I think that Tom has sort of looked at what we've done, created this rotational strategy and Patrick talked about it when we got a question earlier about rotational business that we picked up by moving into Denver. And I suspect Tom is looking at that and thinking about the opportunity. But here's the thing, in this country, in America, there's 26,000 of these large groups that rotate from market to market. In our five hotels, we want to do somewhere between 70 and 100 of these groups a year, right. So this is a huge market. And even if they got their four hotels pristine and beautiful and focused and marketed, it is not overly competitive to us. And so we -- I'd say to Tom, bring it up.
Chip Ode -- Tradition Capital -- Analyst
Okay. Thank you.
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
All right, operator, Lori, I think it's top of the hour. So I think we'll close the questions down and if anyone, if any folks on the phone have -- had questions, they know how to get hold of our Mark or our IR folks. And I know the next week, I'm going to be with Patrick at the conference, with Citibank conference in Florida and Mark is going to go do the Raymond James conference. And we are going to be out in at around our investment community here, quite a bit over the next two or three weeks. So we welcome meeting investors face to face and talking about the continuation of our strategy.
So thank you for being with us this morning. And look forward to seeing those of you that are going to Denver this weekend and those of you that are going to be at these investor conferences next week and the week after. Thanks a lot.
Operator
Thank you for participating in the Ryman Hospitality Properties fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.
Duration: 62 minutes
Call participants:
Scott Lynn -- Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary
Colin Reed -- Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
Mark Fioravanti -- President and Chief Financial Officer
Chris Woronka -- Deutsche Bank -- Analyst
Patrick Chaffin -- Executive Vice President-Asset Management
Smedes Rose -- Citi -- Analyst
William A. Crow -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Patrick Scholes -- SunTrust -- Analyst
Shaun Kelley -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Chip Ode -- Tradition Capital -- Analyst
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