Gaylord Plans Expanded Natl. Resort Hotel
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 2/27/2006
Gaylord Entertainment plans to add another 500 rooms and up to 30,000 additional square feet of meeting space to the 1,500-room Gaylord Natl. Resort & Convention Center hotel scheduled to open in September 2008 outside Washington, D.C.
Colin Reed, Gaylord Entertainment chairman and CEO, said during the company's earnings call that advance bookings are strong for the Natl., which he expects will be "the best convention hotel on the East Coast."
In the fourth quarter, clients booked 184,000 room nights there, bringing advance room bookings to 547,000. That is six times the level of advance bookings generated by the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center and five times that achieved by the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center.
Reed said that adding more rooms to the Natl. "should greatly enhance the project's capacity and appeal to our core customers." The expansion is dependent on Prince George's County, Md., approving additional economic incentives for the project.
Besides the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Fla., and the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas, the company operates Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, Tenn. Together, the three venues offer 1.4 million sq. ft. of exhibit space.
The Gaylord Natl., originally slated to include more than 400,000 sq. ft. of exhibit and meeting space, is being built on a 42-acre site along the Potomac River. Reed said the project's original cost of $565 million has escalated due to nationwide construction material price increases.
Gaylord is also still negotiating to build a resort in the San Diego area.
At the same time it updated progress on the venues, the company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $221.4 million, up 17.4 percent from the year-ago quarter. Increases in pre-opening costs for its facilities, however, drove its loss up to $13 million, compared with $8.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2005. Total revenue per available room was $295.54 in the fourth quarter, up 22 percent from the year-ago quarter.
Management also picked a new COO for Gaylord Hotels: John Caparella, senior vice president and general manager of the Gaylord Palms. Outgoing COO Jay D. Sevigny will serve as an industry adviser.
