Private investor Robert Rowling's recent purchase of a large stake in Gaylord Entertainment has got hotel analysts buzzing. Rowling, a Texas billionaire who last week upped his Gaylord stake to 11.5 percent of the company, also owns Omni Hotels, and some think he'll make a run on Gaylord and somehow combine the two seemingly disparate brands.

Omni has about 40 business hotels and resorts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The firm will open a new-construction 607-room property in downtown Fort Worth, TX in January. Gaylord's specialty is the supertanker convention hotel, a niche it pioneered with the iconic Opryland Hotel in Nashville and has since sprouted to four locations. The firm also owns that shrine to country music, the Grand Ole Opry.

Rowling, through his TRT Holdings, last week increased his stake in Gaylord to 4.7 million shares valued at $122 million. His personal net worth is $6.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

It's not clear how the two hotel firms could work together or whether a rebranding of either chain or any kind of consolidation would make sense. Not surprisingly, neither company is talking about the transaction or what it may mean for their futures.