Snow King Mountain Resort has been working hard to make a comeback after struggling for many years to break even — adding a new gondola, building a new restaurant and opening an $8 million planetarium that had even Bill Nye the Science Guy a little over the moon.
Now it seems that Snow King Mountain Resort may gain some added momentum with the purchase of Snow King Resort, the hotel at the base of the ski hill by the Trailborn hotel chain.
Trailborn, owned by Castle Peak Holdings, already owns 559 rooms across five outdoor destinations, according to its website, and has several projects in development, including one near Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The small chain’s business model specializes in re-invigorating properties in high-demand areas, where it’s difficult to build new hotels.
Suggestive of the heft this company already has, Trailborn just inked a deal with Marriott in December to become a founding member of the international chain’s upcoming, outdoor-focused collection, set to launch this year.
How much Trailborn paid to acquire the hotel from its former owner, KDG Capital, isn’t known. Jackson Hole News & Guide reported that public records show a mortgage of at least $84 million, roughly double what KDG paid to acquire the property in 2019.
Who Is Trailborn?
Trailborn did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for more information about their purchase of Snow King Resort by the time this article was posted. But according to promotional material on their website, the co-founders and Co-CEOs Ben Weinberg and Mike Weiss have a particularly ambitious mindset.
“We are singularly focused on hotels and resorts and iconic outdoor destination markets, National Park gateway towns, beach towns, lake towns, ski resorts and wine country markets, with growing durable demand and fixed uncompetitive supply,” Weinberg explains on a company video for investors. “Places where millions of people are going, where you can’t build hotels anymore and people are looking for a four-star hotel product that they can’t find.”
There’s been a fundamental supply-demand mismatch lately that’s unlike anything Weinberg and Weiss have ever seen before in real estate, the pair go on to say.
“This owner-operator approach is the way to create value and win in our business,” Weiss goes on to say in the video. “First, Trailborn. Our affiliate brand and management company dedicated to operating hotels and resorts in iconic outdoor destinations. This allows us to maximize cash flow with insights, controls and alignment.”
On top of that advantage, Trailborn’s partnership with Marriott gives them access to more than 200 million of the chain’s “Bonvoy” members, as well as what Weiss said is the “biggest and best distribution system in the world.”
“Last is our boots on the ground strategy for off-market sourcing,” Weiss said. “This allows us to acquire at a discount to both market and intrinsic value.”
The Town Hill
Snow King Mountain Resort, which is the ski hill, is Wyoming’s oldest ski resort, and helped pave the way for all the other resorts that came later.
It hasn’t always been called Snow King, though. Originally, it was simply the “Town Hill.” An adventure, five minutes from the heart of Jackson, with no official trails or ski lift devices.
It was still a magnet, even then. Skiers would hike on foot to the top, all so they could enjoy what is one of the steepest downhill runs in the lower 48. In fact, that run is still the most favored by those training to compete in the Olympics.
Town Hill was renamed in 1932 to Ruth Hanna Simms Ski Hill, in honor of a local resident who donated money to build a ski jump. The Civilian Conservation Corps, meanwhile, added a hiking and horse trail for the Forest Service, which led to the top of the mountain.
One year later, Jackson Hole Ski Association formed, and then things really began to roll. They renamed the hill Snow King and awarded a contract in 1939 to build a lift device.
This lift device was nothing like the modern cars that take people up the mountain today. It was a makeshift device, cobbled together out of a 4,000-foot used cable purchased from a Casper oil field company and attached to an old Ford tractor engine. Skiers would grab the cable for a lengthy 8-minute ride up the mountain on their skis, one that could test the strength of one’s arms.
The Rise After The Fall
Snow King helped cement Jackson’s reputation as a ski town, but it was soon eclipsed by other ski resorts. Particularly, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, which hosts upward of 700,000 ski visits annually.
Snow King owners have said publicly that they’d been losing about $500,000 annually on winter operations. At one point, Cowboy State Daily was told they were attracting only 40,000 ski visitors. This was at a time when 150,000 was the minimum needed to break even.
Changing the downward spiral has required many changes in recent times, according to Snow King Mountain Resort officials.
These changes are focused, right now, on attracting visitors outside of the snow skiing season. A new zipline, for example, touted as being the steepest in North America, and a faster gondola. They’ve also expanded the ski hill’s boundaries and added new ski trails, as well as new snowmaking equipment.
The biggest addition, though, is an observatory and planetarium on the top of the mountain, which opened last year, and a new restaurant and a new concert venue that can host up to 2,500 people.
Ryan Stanley, Snow King Mountain Resort President and CEO, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that he’s pleased with the sale of the hotel at Snow King’s base, and sure it can only mean good things for their efforts.
Meanwhile, all the winter-related improvements they’ve done have been working to bring in more skiers.
“This summer will be our first season with everything completed, including the new restaurant, Aurora, a new wedding site at the summit, and the end of construction on the top of the mountain,” Stanley said. “I think people will be excited to experience all the new improvements and enhanced experience we have to offer at the top of the mountain.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
