Growing by Listening to the Guest

In a Resort TradesTalk Podcast conversation, Steve Krohn talks growth, independence, technology—and some of the challenges facing the timeshare industry.

When I sat down with Steve Krohn for an episode of the Resort TradesTalk Podcast, I knew we would have plenty to talk about. As president and CEO of The Resorts Companies Inc., the employee-owned organization behind Massanutten Resort and Wilderness Presidential Resort, Steve has been involved in a remarkable period of growth and diversification.

And there is plenty going on.

The company has expanded its ski operation, built out its water park, added mountain biking, zip lines and a mountain coaster, opened the Shenandoah H2O Hotel and Indoor Water Park, ventured into 55-and-over residential development with Bluestone Peak at Massanutten Mountain and recently completed its acquisition of Keyholder Vacations.

So I started by asking him about the growth—and how it all fits together.

Steve’s answer was pretty simple: success creates opportunity.

“We’ve always tried to move sort of lockstep in growing our amenities as we grow our accommodations,” he explained.

I liked another thing he said even better: “The one problem I really love is a line.”

In Steve’s world, a line means people want what you’re offering. It may be a crowd-management problem, but that’s a problem he can solve.

And Massanutten recently had a pretty big one.

Becoming a victim of success

After the resort expanded its ski operation between 2021 and 2023, Steve and a colleague happened to visit the water park on a Saturday morning in January. It was only 10 a.m., but Massanutten was already turning people away because it had reached its fire-marshal occupancy limit.

“In the middle of January in a water park,” Steve recalled. “We became a victim of our success.”

That led to the next logical question: If the expanded ski operation was bringing in more guests, and those guests included families with children who wanted something different to do, why not expand the water park, too?

That’s essentially the Massanutten growth strategy in a nutshell.

The resort began as a ski destination in the early 1970s. The company acquired Wilderness in 1981 and Massanutten in 1984, then doubled the ski area in the late 1980s. Golf capacity doubled in the 1990s. Water-park planning began in 2003. Mountain biking, zip lines and other activities followed.

Most recently, the resort opened what Steve describes as the only monorail mountain coaster in the United States.

The underlying idea isn’t simply to keep adding attractions. It’s to recognize that families don’t necessarily want to do the same thing at the same time.

As Steve put it, a family might have parents skiing on the mountain while younger children are perfectly happy at the water park.

That makes Massanutten’s four-season strategy particularly interesting.

I mentioned during our conversation that my son actually learned to ski at Massanutten back in 1992. Steve laughed when I told him that—and then admitted that, despite running a ski resort, he has only snow-skied twice in his life.

These days, he’s a snowboarder. And, apparently, an addicted one.

Four seasons…. Something for everybody

Steve says the resort’s focus has always been family- and outdoor-oriented, particularly because of its location within a couple of hours of large population centers along the Eastern Seaboard.

The four-season strategy grew out of looking at what worked elsewhere.

Steve pointed to Wisconsin Dells, where indoor water parks helped resorts create a winter business even though there was no ski mountain. Massanutten had essentially the opposite problem: Winter was already busy, so why not develop something that would attract people in the summer?

That thinking has grew legs.

Massanutten’s accommodations are unusually well suited to extended families, with four-bedroom units making inter-generational travel easier. There is something for the adrenaline junkie, Steve noted, but there is also plenty for someone who would rather go bird watching.

I couldn’t resist adding that they might want to promote a “nine and dine” after Steve described the resort’s “Three Nines” challenge: nine ski or snowboard runs, nine holes of golf and nine miles of mountain biking—all in one day.

We both laughed, but the Massanutten team has developed a challenging concept. They offer a broad menu of experiences that allows different members of a group to vacation together without having to do the same thing.

Keyholder brings a new generation

Another important piece of the company’s growth is Keyholder Vacations.

The Resorts Companies originally invested in Keyholder during the COVID era and subsequently completed the acquisition. Steve described the combination as one of those situations where the more you learn, the better the fit looks.

Keyholder is founder-led, as is The Resorts Companies, and many of its leaders are Disney veterans with a strong hospitality orientation.

But there is also a generational difference.

The Resorts Companies has been around for about 45 years, while Keyholder is considerably younger. Massanutten’s owner base has naturally evolved toward empty nesters and grandparents. Keyholder’s customers tend to be families with younger children.

That makes the two customer bases complementary.

And Steve said his team is learning from Keyholder, particularly when it comes to technology and modern marketing.

As we talked about Keyholder CEO Nick Cotton, Steve made a leadership observation that applies well beyond the acquisition:

“There’s no such thing as a successful leader in my mind. There’s a successful team. The best leader builds that.”

I agreed. A leader doesn’t have to know everything. The trick is finding people who know what you don’t.

Independent—and employee-owned

One of the things I particularly wanted to explore was what it means to remain an independent resort company in an increasingly consolidated industry.

The Resorts Companies has been employee-owned for decades. Its ESOP began in 1993, and in 2015 the company became 100% employee-owned.

Steve likes the fact that the people who are accountable to the shareholders are also the people working alongside him at the resort.

Independence, he said, gives the company fewer layers and the ability to make decisions more quickly. It also allows management to maintain a long-term perspective rather than focusing primarily on quarterly results.

But independence means building a stronger marketing capability and more purposeful guest services. You can’t rely on a preexisting brand acquaintance or customer base to make an impact. You’ve got to innovate and focus on delivering a product that builds its own legend.

That discipline may be one reason the company has been able to grow in a measured way while continuing to invest in the guest experience.

AI with a human purpose

Naturally, our conversation eventually turned to AI.

As I told Steve, it seems as though AI comes up in nearly every podcast conversation I have these days.

At Massanutten, Steve says AI is being used primarily to improve efficiency and handle mundane tasks, such as responding to maintenance calls. The goal isn’t to eliminate the human element. In fact, it’s almost the opposite: free employees to spend more time interacting personally with guests.

The Massanutten app is a good example.

Steve uses it himself when guests ask questions about operating hours. He may not know the answer off the top of his head—but he knows exactly where to find it.

The resort is also beginning to use technology to personalize the guest experience. If a family has been looking at children’s activities, for example, the app can alert them when Theo the Bear, Splash the Frog or Sly the Fox is headed toward a particular pool.

And if someone has been browsing the Virginia Barbecue menu, perhaps they’ll be interested when a new rack of ribs comes off the grill.

I pointed out that there’s a fine line between being helpful and being intrusive.

Steve agreed. The objective is relevance.

An industry issue worth discussing

Our conversation took a more serious turn when I asked Steve what he would change about the public perception of timeshare ownership.

Speaking as ARDA Treasurer, he was blunt about the need to confront fraudulent claims made by the exit industry.

But he also acknowledged that the timeshare industry has a responsibility of its own.

Some older properties simply haven’t been reinvested in adequately and no longer meet today’s vacation expectations. Those properties create a legitimate problem for owners—and an opening for exit companies.
Steve believes the industry needs better options for those legacy properties.

He described a “partial wind down” concept his company has supported in Virginia. Rather than forcing owners of a struggling 200-unit property to shoulder increasingly higher maintenance fees—or pushing the entire association into bankruptcy—perhaps a portion of the units could be removed from the timeshare structure and converted to income-producing residential property.

That could also help address another problem in resort communities: the shortage of affordable housing for the people who work there.

As Steve sees it, that’s potentially a win-win.

Watch the full Resort TradesTalk conversation with Steve Krohn on the Resort Trades’ YouTube channel.
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