KSL Capital Partners has invested $9 billion in travel and leisure businesses since 2005; its portfolio includes Alterra Mountain Co., Apple Leisure Group and Outrigger Hotels & Resorts. Its CEO, Eric Resnick, will sit on a panel at the World Travel & Tourism Council Global Summit. News editor Johanna Jainchill interviewed Resnick about the panel's theme: building successful future destinations.
Q: What foresight and vision do destinations need to have to be ready for the future?
Eric Resnick
A: Knowing your customers is always the best way to deliver on guest expectations, both today and tomorrow. Having both a broad and deep understanding and appreciation of your customer will help to shape decision-making and confidence. At KSL, we are of the belief that the best way to know what your customer wants is to ask them directly and balance this data with our own intuition about where customer tastes may be heading. It is also important to think not just in terms of who today's customer is, but who is the customer of tomorrow for a given destination. For example, the greatest growth in tourism over the next decade will come from travelers from Asia. Understanding the Asian consumer is of particular importance.
Q: How is KSL positioning itself for the future?
A: We target markets and sectors where our firm has uniquely strong capabilities, experience and insight. At the same time, we believe that this prolonged period of growth will eventually come to end. We strive to strike a balance of growing our capabilities in a logical way while not straying too far from what has made us successful in the past.
Q: How important is it for companies to recognize synergies among its assets?
A: While it is not our primary focus, we set the stage for it to occur over time. Our goal is to encourage and support the authenticity and unique attributes of each of our investments while leveraging our deep experience in the travel and leisure industries. We facilitate the leaders of each of our businesses getting to know one another so that partnerships and synergies will arise in an organic way. Offering Alterra's Ikon Pass for sale to Apple Leisure's vacation club members is one example. Apple Leisure's travel distribution business marketing Outrigger's properties is another.
Q: As one of the biggest ski industry players, how do you address global warming?
A: The synergies and capital investments made possible by having created an organization of scale greatly helps offset some of the inherent challenges of the ski industry. Since our inception, we have made responsible investing part of our process. We evaluate environmental risks that are unique to the business and evaluate the business' environmental management plan. We also look for opportunities to reduce our portfolio companies' carbon footprint, reduce waste and reduce water usage. Squaw Valley recently announced that it partnered with Tesla through the local power company to provide clean, reliable backup power in place of diesel generators and eliminated the sale of bottled water at the resort.
Q: How important are public-private partnerships for a destination's success?
A: At a minimum, they can be very important in accelerating private investment and in establishing new destinations. We have particularly focused on support for attracting reliable air service -- it's very hard to drive to Hawaii -- land exchanges, employee housing and other transportation alternatives. We conduct due diligence on a prospective business' impact on its surrounding community: Does it have a good reputation? Is it a good employer? Is it a good corporate citizen? Given the areas in which we operate, in many cases our investments are a significant, if not the largest, driver of the local community. Acting in concert as a local community partner is imperative. In our experience, this overall partnership approach leads to the most enduring model of success for each of these stakeholders.