Hall of fame induction shocks Gillett

VAIL The original bid the Gillett Family put in to buy Vail Mountain in the mid-1980s was rejected. And when the winning bidders backed out and the bank called George Gillett to see if he was still interested, he said no thanks.

With the final bids due the following day, Gilletts wife, Rose, woke him up in the middle of the night. George, she said, the boys and I would like you to buy Vail.Thats how Gillett, who was recently inducted into the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, remembers taking the helm of one of the worlds top ski resorts. It was, he said, a family endeavor from the start a fact that drove not only the philosophy behind Vails remaking in the 1980s but is also probably a big part of the reason he was inducted into the hall of fame.We loved skiing, and we tried to think about it from the standpoint of the average person, Gillett said, speaking in his office at Booth Creek Management Corp. in Vail. We thought of ourselves as the ombudsman to the guests.What Gillett and the Vail management team discovered was that people coming to ski here had to jump through an extraordinary set of hoops before their skis actually touched snow.Because part of his other business interests included television stations, Gillett used camera crews to record vacationers and their Vail experience from the first phone calls to their arrival at the mountain.We discovered a series of bottlenecks you wouldnt know about being here, he said. It would take people six or seven calls just to plan the reservations, all with separate phone numbers.From what they learned through the videos as well as on-mountain marketing surveys, Gillett and the management team started making changes based on what he says was a mantra: Exceed the guests expectations. That meant better transportation, centralized reservations, more groomed runs, high-speed lifts and a corporate culture that recognized why all these things were critical.A skiing lifeOriginally from Wisconsin, Gillett started skiing while attending college at Amherst in Massachusetts. He recalled one of his first ski trips up to the formidable Mount Mansfield in Stowe, Vt., in the late 1950s.I ran into some of the U.S. Ski Team guys up there, and my roommate and I made absolute fools of ourselves, he said. They took us up on some of those deep and steep runs. But we ultimately overcame the fear.After visiting Aspen in 1958, Gillett was sold on Colorado.It was an eye-opener, he said. The amount and quality of the snow, the size of the mountains. It really got me hooked on Colorado skiing.But while love of skiing ultimately determined his path, it was his success as a businessman that laid the groundwork for his later achievements. From sales to management consulting work to a job with an early software developer, Gillett went on to own TV stations and a meat-processing plant businesses that provided the capital to buy Vail.After his first trip to Vail in 1963, Gillett was hooked on the area. With Rose and their four boys, they started coming out regularly in 1972, buying property in 1977.As a family we fell in love with the areas, especially the people, he said. When you think of Vail of course you think about the mountain, but the thing we really enjoyed the most was the people.Freedom was missingIt was faith in people, Gillett said, that convinced him that Vail could be more than it was. In addition to the front-line people teaching skiing and loading chairs, he points now to three mentors who inspired and helped him achieve success: Vail founder Peter Seibert, head of mountain operations Bill Sarge Brown, ski filmmaker Warren Miller.Warren taught me a word, something that he thought was missing from most peoples lives, Gillett said. The word is freedom. Thats what you get when you go skiing, and Warren kept teaching that.With that in mind, Gillett kept learning about what the guests wanted while relying on Seibert and Sarge to make it happen. They were both these crusty, tough war heroes, but they had huge hearts and they understood the guests, Gillett said, choking up a bit while speaking of Sarge.He was the boss, and I remember one fall he handed me my radio and my designation was 01, which had been his for years, Gillett said. It meant so much to me, it was his acknowledgement .With people like Sarge and Seibert on the mountain as well as other supporters such as the Gorsuch and Gramshammer families, Gillett said the plan to bring World Championship skiing to Vail moved forward. After the mountain hosted the races in 1989, Gillett said he knew theyd done the right thing.Europe saw this, they heard it, and it was astounding, he said. In 1988, our skier days were about 2 percent international; the year after it was 13 percent. It was a huge new fan base.Gillett also credits President Gerald Ford with putting Vail on the map internationally, and not just for the winter.You cant talk about those days without a huge acknowledgement to President Ford, he said. He did us a great honor by hosting the World Forum here in the summer. It helped start to create a whole new awareness, a whole new season discovered.Always winterFor Gillett, who left Vail about eight years ago after the resort transferred to the current ownership group, the ski industry is still very much his focus. Booth Creek Management named after a creek in Vail near the Gillett home owns and manages six ski areas in the U.S.: Northstar-at-Tahoe and Sierra-at-Tahoe in California; Waterville Valley, Cranmore Mountain and Loon Mountain in New Hampshire; and the Summit at Snoqualmie in Washington. The Gillett family also owns Grand Targhee Resort in Wyoming, the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and other businesses.With the National Hockey League strike this past season and a poor snow year in Washington, it was a challenging year. But Gillett said Booth Creek is in good shape financially and is poised to expand.Weve looked recently at some serious destination (resort) opportunities, he said. And we have major (real estate) developments at Northstar and at Loon.While hes busy with all that, this fall hell be officially inducted into the Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame an honor he said came as a complete surprise.I hadnt even thought about it, he said. Its such a shock.Even so, he said he likes the company. Seibert was inducted in 1980, and Sarge was in the class of 1982.When you look at whos involved, it just makes you very proud to be associated with that wonderful group of people.Alex Miller can be reached at 949-0555, ext. 615, or amiller@vaildaily.com.Vail, Colorado