Jason Koval

Next question, please.

Operator

Your next question comes from Alistair Scobie from Atlantic Equity.

Alistair Scobie - Atlantic Equity

Hi. Good morning. I just wanted to ask, in relation to corporate rates, you mentioned on the call you felt more comfortable than expected with the way these were turning out. Can you expand on that a little bit of talk? Any particular markets? I''m thinking of New York, if we could get a little bit of guidance as to where you think the corporate rate negotiations are coming outs.

Vasant M. Prabhu

As is always the case with this, this is account specific, region specific. I think the best way to describe it is the way we did it which is we had a certain feeling going into at few months ago.

We''re certainly coming out better than we expected. It seems to be getting better every day. It would be difficult to put a single number on it. These things are not able to put a single number on but I would say sort of ending flat to slightly down, certainly not as much down as we might have estimated even a few months ago.

Frits D. van Paasschen

I think just to build on that little bit, the growth in occupancy certainly emboldens us to take a more aggressive stand on rates looking forward and the last piece is the efforts that we were talking about earlier on the call around revenue management and understanding load and projected occupancies gives us a better way of anticipating just where we can play on rate.

Jason Koval

Next question, please, Silvia.

Operator

Your next question comes from Bill Crow from Raymond James.

William Crow - Raymond James and Associates

Two items. Frits, if you could talk about the Sheraton Manhattan. Whether you think you would maintain ownership or is that something you would sell the property and then insure that you had a franchise or managed asset? Also, what brand would you think would fit in that in market given the competition among your other brands? And then, Vasant, one clarification, you said that net debt would decline $100 million to $200 million this year. I assume that''s before the SFAS 167 adjustment.

Frits D. van Paasschen

I''ll take the Sheraton Manhattan question first. I think the important thing that investors should know is that we as management don''t want to have another Bal Harbour project that we would run and develop on our own. So Bill, whether we would sell or maintain some ownership as we went into development with a partner depends on what kind of deal we would structure. Our point of view here was that and the reason we took the flag off, we wanted to take our time to do this right and we felt like, given the $6 billion that''s been invested behind the share to be Sheraton brand over the last three years and the additional $4 billion that will be putting a gains developing this brand over the next three years.

This property really just didn''t hold up in terms of guest satisfaction and the physical plant. And I say that acknowledging sincerely that the work that our team has done to keep guests happy over the last few years has been terrific. In terms of which brand at this point given the location, it''s too early to tell. I think with the size and with the mix of properties we have, we''d be looking at an upper upscale brand for that area and quite possibly maintaining the Sheraton flag on what comes next.