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New England Hermitage Club, VT, in the news.
- Thread starter Muleski
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- barnstormer lift at the hermitage club chief financial officer at hermitage dan solaz dover treasurer marco tallini hermitage club ceo and founder jim barnes hermitage ski club hermitage ski club bankruptcy les otten's the balsams private ski clubs ski resort at haystack mountain wilmington town manager scott tucker yellowstone club
I wonder what the discount is on the debt buyback from the bank. If it's enough then we'll see if the club can be profitable. They'll have to prove viability through annual memberships before anyone would pay an initiation and I can't imagine anyone buying property at this point.
This is exactly what someone needs to figure out. The math has to be kept extremely simple. How many members at a reasonable annual fee are required to keep the lifts spinning? Would need line items for maintenance, snowmaking, etc. I'm assuming everything else beyond that (food service, spa services, etc.) can be priced to fund itself. They can't get any more complicated than this. No real estate plays. No hotel construction. No deals including funny-money house accounts. Members would need to know that their dues are funding ongoing operations and not speculative development or Barnes' latest inspiration.
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I don't think the business model ever made sense as I believe the ski operations could never be funded from membership dues alone. And it has to be subsidized from real estate sales. Unless they had 10-15k members instead of the roughly 5k. But the mtn/club is not big enough to handle that amount. The new Prez has members conference call tomorrow to to inform them the new game plan. Will be interesting to see what he says
I think I agree with you. Membership has been under 500 as far as I know and the annual dues from that membership base aren't going to give you that much of an operating budget. It's also worth noting that Hermitage Club members use the club a lot. You have to figure that nearly all are within driving distance and expect to ski just about every winter weekend. Contract that with the Yellowstone Club which costs more than 3 times as much (initiation and annual dues) where members use the facilities much less frequently. (How much skiing do Bill Gates and Justin Timberlake actually do?) So at the Hermitage you have a small membership that pays relatively low annual dues while using the facility heavily. That's a tough combination. And if the only way to make it work is to sell a condo and not pay the contractors so you pay to run the lifts, well, that's a problem.
We will see what they come up with. But members need to be smart enough to walk away if the plan hinges on real estate sales, hotels or other distractions.
I think I agree with you. Membership has been under 500 as far as I know and the annual dues from that membership base aren't going to give you that much of an operating budget. It's also worth noting that Hermitage Club members use the club a lot. You have to figure that nearly all are within driving distance and expect to ski just about every winter weekend. Contrast that with the Yellowstone Club which costs more than 3 times as much where members use the facilities much less frequently. (How much skiing do Bill Gates and Justin Timberlake actually do?) So at the Hermitage you have a small membership that pays relatively low annual dues while using the facility heavily. That's a tough combination. And if the only way to make it work is to sell a condo and not pay the contractors so you pay to run the lifts, well, that's a problem.
We will see what they come up with. But members need to be smart enough to walk away if the plan hinges on real estate sales, hotels or other distractions.
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Everyone I've spoken to about Hermitage thought the model was broken from the start. Surprised it took this long to get here. It is a very unfortunate situation for most people involved, with the exception of those few folks who may have made some money from this poop show.
While the overwhelming/vast majority of the members live within driving distance (NYC, Boston, Baltimore, Princeton,...), most members were NOT using the club every weekend.If anything, it was more often empty - certainly mid week.
Having been to both clubs and knowing members of both, The Yellowstone Club and The Hermitage Club are COMPLETELY different animals, catering to very different people. Comparing the two is like comparing travelling on business class to chartering a Gulfstream G650.
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Yes. As far as skiing goes, they were not open midweek. Skiing was Friday-Sunday only.
Yellowstone and Hermitage are completely different. Of particular interest is the fact that Yellowstone is open and Hermitage is not. So in their differences there may be things to learn. I believe Yellowstone has failed once but has better recent history while Hermitage is actually the second failed attempt at a private ski club at Haystack. Yellowstone costs much more and for members, it probably is one of their many homes. Members are paying a lot and the club only needs resources to cater to a smaller percentage of them. At the Hermitage we are probably talking about the 2nd home for most members. They are paying considerably less but the club needs resources to cater to a larger percentage of them on weekends and holidays. I don't see how they can make the Hermitage Club work. They would need to charge much more (possibly more than Yellowstone) in order to provide a level of service that members expect.
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The Yellowstone Club itself - that concept - never failed. It was Blixseth's idea to borrow $400 million to acquire and develop other properties/businesses that failed. Long story.
I am fairly familiar with both clubs and they really have very little in common - despite what Hermitage would like you to believe. It frankly makes no sense to compare the two. For starters, The Yellowstone Club hosts 100 times more events than Hermitage could ever dream of. That alone is a significant source of revenue for Yellowstone.
Just because you can't make it work selling business class tickets does not mean that you can't be successful chartering private planes.
Hermitage will eventually meet it's inevitable end - unfortunate as that is.
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Don't know what the operations budget needs to be for a mountain like that. But from a membership standpoint you need your regular membership dues for those who are current members plus sell annual memberships for, say, $6k per family for skiing and golf. Absolutely no initiation at this point. Then aggressively market add-ons for additional revenue. Would I pay that? No, as I'll need a fairly robust race program come 2019-2020. But if I was a knock around skier interested in a bit more luxury with 6 year old kids ... mayyyybe.
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They have some pretty damn legit race coaches in the program there. Maybe if it totally falls through our club can poach one.
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Maybe he wants to poach a coach from MSA?
I hear they train at Hermitage....
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I hear they train at Hermitage....
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Maybe he wants to poach a coach from MSA?
I hear they train at Hermitage....
Maybe. Certainly not going to try to poach from Stratton. Nothing worth poaching from there, especially at u16 level...
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Definitely MSA, I didn't know Hermitage has it's own program.
Maybe he wants to poach a coach from MSA?
I hear they train at Hermitage....
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MSA trained weekends at Herm and at Mt Snow midweek last few years. This year we will be 100% at Mt Snow if Herm does not open. Yes, Herm had their own program consisting mostly of young kids -- u10 and u12. Maybe 40 in total.
We are looking for coaches at MSA. But I could be poached for the right price ....
Just the last paragraph of that article gives some insight into the "levels" of membership, investment, side deals and one-offs that the club had been providing. It's clear that they were flying by the seat of their pants and this is not just hindsight. All of this was evident from the start in their promotional and marketing materials.
It's good that the re-structuring plans can move forward but membership seems somewhat split. It would appear that it's going to cost them more than 50% more in annual dues to keep the lights on and the lifts spinning. If it were my money I would need to see that $4 million is sufficient to operate the resort. I would also need to see the that there is a process in place to spend that $4 million on operations and not on breaking ground on some new condo or hotel.
https://vtdigger.org/2018/10/03/her...n-condo-hotel-for-year-round-resort-business/
So it appears that the club is looking to pick up right where it left off. They haven't even figured out how/if they are going to open for the coming ski season and they're ready to throw resources at the construction of a hotel. If I was a member this is exactly what I would not want to hear. The club would need to demonstrate that it can be sustainable. Yet this initiative pretty much explicitly states the club's belief that it could be sustainable if only it had a new hotel. This is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the bankruptcy. It was always about the next real estate play. This is all wrong. There are many factors that could determine the success or failure of this club but the construction of a new hotel isn't one of them.
The logic here is completely flawed. It is true that it's hard to run a seasonal resort. And it is true that you want to attract people during the off-season as best you can. A hotel doesn't do this. Not at all. It's just another expensive asset that will be underutilized during the off-season. And it's business as usual for the Club to be throw up smokescreens to members (summer weddings) and officials (supporting the local economy, buying the town a fire truck) to distract them from the flawed logic.
The Hermitage should be doing everything it can to demonstrate to members that they have a real way to utilize existing assets and membership dues to operate the resort.
So it appears that the club is looking to pick up right where it left off. They haven't even figured out how/if they are going to open for the coming ski season and they're ready to throw resources at the construction of a hotel. If I was a member this is exactly what I would not want to hear. The club would need to demonstrate that it can be sustainable. Yet this initiative pretty much explicitly states the club's belief that it could be sustainable if only it had a new hotel. This is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the bankruptcy. It was always about the next real estate play. This is all wrong. There are many factors that could determine the success or failure of this club but the construction of a new hotel isn't one of them.
The logic here is completely flawed. It is true that it's hard to run a seasonal resort. And it is true that you want to attract people during the off-season as best you can. A hotel doesn't do this. Not at all. It's just another expensive asset that will be underutilized during the off-season. And it's business as usual for the Club to be throw up smokescreens to members (summer weddings) and officials (supporting the local economy, buying the town a fire truck) to distract them from the flawed logic.
The Hermitage should be doing everything it can to demonstrate to members that they have a real way to utilize existing assets and membership dues to operate the resort.
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I’ve recently heard rumors that the Adams Farm has gone bankrupt due to the fact that they went in on some real estate purchases with Jim Barnes and either co-signed or guaranteed loans. Can anyone confirm this? It sounds straight up nuts. If true this is verging on Bernie Madoff territory, no?