The 96-room Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe. The iconic resort also has 100 guest houses and 23 villas. Provided photo.
by Bruce Edwards, Vermont Business Magazine It’s perhaps Vermont’s most iconic and legendary resort – Trapp Family Lodge.
The story of the Trapp family is well documented in the movie “The Sound of Music” which still helps draw visitors to the Stowe resort situated on 2,600 acres.
With another winter season under way, Sam von Trapp said the business forecast is looking positive.
Photo: Sam von Trapp, director and executive vice president, Trapp Family Lodge. Courtesy photo.
“This coming year is looking solid and we’re coming off one of our best years ever,” said von Trapp, the resort’s director and executive vice president.
He said fiscal 2019 was up significantly over the previous year with resort revenues up 10 percent.
“I think a lot of that is the economy but I also think our team has been doing a great job,” he said.
The resort has 300 employees of which 175 are full time.
The heart of the resort is a 96-room alpine lodge with a European flair. It was built in 1980 after a fire destroyed the original 27-room lodge and Trapp family home.
Since then, the resort has developed 100 guest houses and 23 villas.
The guest houses are time shares while the existing villas are either fractional ownership or solely owned.
Von Trapp said plans call for 24 more villas to be built as sole ownership properties. Each of the eight new buildings to be constructed will house three villas each. The first building is already under construction.
Von Trapp said following the 1980 fire fractional sales of the guest house expansion helped fund construction of the new 96-room lodge.
The family history depicted in “The Sound of Music” still resonates with many who are attracted to the resort for the first time and then come back.
“So for many of our repeat guests they come because they can step right out of their room and immediately be connected with nature or because they want to mountain bike or cross-country ski without getting in their car to start the day,” von Trapp said.
Like other Vermont resorts, Trapp Family Lodge draws most of its visitors from the Northeast and Canada.
Von Trapp said international visitors are in the minority.
“We draw some because of the history and certainly it’s a draw from Canada but as far as drawing Germans, Austrians, Swiss, it tends to be those already living in the US who are looking for a European experience,” he said.
Von Trapp said Europeans who visit the US “are probably looking for an American experience.”
The singing Trapp family, including matriarch Maria von Trapp, fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 and eventually settled in Stowe in 1942, buying a part of the Gale farm. What became known as the Trapp Family Lodge opened in 1950.
And of course the resort retains the feel of the von Trapps’ native Austria.
“We make a point of maintaining that Austrian feel,” he said. “It’s in the cuisine, it’s in the decor, the architecture but also in the focus on what my father refers to as `gemutlichkeit’ … a sense of coziness, of welcoming.”
His father, Johannes von Trapp, is company president.
The resort offers cross-country skiing, snowshoeing and back country skiing. There’s also an indoor fitness center, mountain biking in summer and an 18-hole disc golf course. For meetings, weddings and other events there is a 6,000-square-foot conference center and five Austrian-themed meeting rooms.
The resort also provides tours, including one that relates to the Trapp family agricultural programs. The resort has beef cattle, pigs, chickens and sheep, the latter “which are probably the most photographed sheep in Vermont,” according to von Trapp.
For the winter, von Trapp said cross-country season pass sales are up. “I think people recognize that we are really committed to providing the best skiing we can and they know we’re going to do everything we can for them,” he said.
There are 65-kilometers of trails with snowmaking on a few kilometers. Von Trapp said the limited snowmaking helps “fill in some of the problem spots.”
“We have areas where if we didn’t make snow on a hundred yard section of it, we wouldn’t be able to get to a whole bunch of trails,” he said. “So by making snow on the Achilles heel areas it’s very impactful on the experience of the whole network.
A relatively new business for the family is the von Trapp Brewery. Started in 2010, the brewery and beer hall has proved to be a major attraction
“The beer hall and restaurant attached to the brewery has become a very popular destination and is a big part of the operations today,” von Trapp said.
He said the brewery now distributes beer in 10 states with sales up more than 10 percent in 2019 from the previous year.
Like almost every employer in the state, he said the biggest challenge is hiring.
To ease the labor shortage, he said the resort hires groups of foreign student workers, one group during the winter season and another during the summer.
Regarding the hospitality industry, von Trapp said his father believes that professionalizing jobs in the industry would help attract more workers.
“Some people feel that these are jobs that they only take while they’re waiting to get a real job,” he said. “It’s always so nice when you meet the career waiter who really takes his profession seriously.”
Von Trapp said the hope is that, “We can find more people embracing careers in hospitality.”
He also said he’d like the state “to do a lot more to market tourism.”
Bruce Edwards is a freelance writer from Southern Vermont.