Ryman is paying $1.38 billion for two Orlando hotels that netted $10.4 million. Someone has to make up the difference, and it will not be Ryman.
The Price And What It Buys
Ryman Hospitality Properties announced on August 10, 2026 that it will buy Grande Lakes Orlando from Trinity Investments for $1.38 billion. The 409-acre complex holds two hotels, a 1,010-room JW Marriott and a 582-room Ritz-Carlton, plus a Greg Norman championship golf course, a 40,000-square-foot spa, 14 food and beverage outlets and a waterpark. The farm-to-table family resort states it is focused on quality guest experiences. Marriott will maintain the flags and marketing for both hotels under their existing brands. Ryman expects to close the deal some time in Q3 2026.
The math is roughly $867,000 per key across 1,592 keys. For context on what Ryman already owns, its portfolio runs to 12,364 rooms across five Gaylord resorts (also a Marriott flag) and two more JW Marriotts, so this single transaction adds about 13% to its room count and introduces Ritz-Carlton to the company for the first time. For context, high luxury hotel rooms typically run about $1MM/key but that’s usually brand new construction and only a third of these keys would fall into that category. In short, this seems high.
According to Ryman’s own press release,Grande Lakes generated net income of $10,414,000 in the twelve months ended June 30, 2026. Add back $57,754,000 of net interest expense, $39,844,000 of depreciation and $1,993,000 of ownership-structure items, and you get adjusted EBITDA of $110,005,000. Ryman is paying 12.5 times that figure. Against the $1.38 billion price, the bottom-line profit is a return of about 0.75%. Those figures are likely why the hotels were available, and also indicate the high price (it had to be high to get a deal done.)
Why The Math Demands Higher Rates
Ryman told investors it expects the deal to be “accretive to adjusted funds” from operations per share in 2027, which means the plan requires the property to produce meaningfully more money next year than it produced this year. There are only a handful of levers available for that…