Richard Allen Hightower
Evercore ISI Institutional Equities, Research Division
All right. Thanks for that comment, Tom. Really quickly, maybe just to turn the leverage question on its head for a second here. You mentioned the forecasted
FFO accretion under the current parameters, its not a huge number in the next couple of years. I mean do you think that theres flex if investors may want a little more FFO accretion sort of in the shorter-term, maybe given where we are
in the cycle in terms of certainty around that? And then NAV accretion, its sort of a separate argument, Im wondering how if you could comment on how you think about that as well? And then Ill hop back.
Thomas Jeremiah Baltimore
Chairman,
President & CEO
If your if the question is would we lever up, Rich, only trying to understand the question.
Richard Allen Hightower
Evercore ISI Institutional
Equities, Research Division
Yes, its maybe whats the incremental appetite for more leverage, again, to turn that question on its head, if
the FFO accretion numbers that reported earlier maybe arent what investors are looking for, hypothetically?
Thomas Jeremiah Baltimore
Chairman, President & CEO
Yes, we were
comfortable with the leverage today and want to bring that down, Long term, as you know, we aspire to low 3s as we get to investment grade, that takes time, were nowhere near that at this point. But levering up more is not something that we
really want to contemplate at this point.
Operator
Our next question is from Smedes Rose with Citi.
Bennett
Smedes Rose
Citigroup Inc, Research Division
I
just wanted to ask on the the part of the strategy of Chesapeake is to group up with that on that portfolio, but they have a lot less meeting space per key. So are there any incremental investment plans to add more meeting space? Or is
there something you can do without the same number of amount of group space on a per key basis?
Thomas Jeremiah Baltimore
Chairman, President & CEO
Yes. Smedes, its
a great question. Id make a couple of observations because sometimes the perception of Park is that were all of these sort of big group houses, We do have 9 hotels, obviously, that are greater than 125,000 square feet of meeting space.
Our top 10 assets obviously account for about 60%, 65% of our EBITDA premerger with Chesapeake, but we do have a number of other hotels with 20,000, 25,000, 30,000, 40,000 square feet of meeting space. We would think that by bolting on this
portfolio at Chesapeake that there is an opportunity to group up that portfolio as well. The work that Rob and his team have done and our feasibility team have done so far, we think incrementally, 150 basis points there at about 20%, 20.5%. So
moving that from that to 22% to 22.5%, we think is very achievable. And again with the great success that weve shown with Park, by anchoring your business with group, layering in contract business, and then it allows you to more efficiently
yield your transient. And every time that weve done that, weve seen the benefit of that in our first quarter. Again, sector-leading performance again of 4.5% of RevPAR. We look out third quarter, were looking for our group pace to
be up 35%. So we really think that in this climate, group is a real competitive advantage, and weve had stripped partly with our management partner, in this case, Hilton, to look forward to doing with that with our expanded partners to make it
sure that we can, as Rob likes to say, Remix the mix, so Ill steal his phrase for a second.
So I think its been really beneficial
for us.
Bennett Smedes Rose
Citigroup Inc,
Research Division
Okay. Let me just ask you too on the Hilton Caribe which I guess opens or reopens in the next week or so. Does your guidance
contemplate, including business interruption as that continues to ramp up? Or how where does that stand in terms of the insurance proceeds there on the business side?