Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: the annual

  • The French Alps and Utah are getting the Winter Games

    In my humble and partially biased opinion, two of the greatest places on earth to snowboard are the French Alps and Utah. I say the French Alps because, after 13 years of annual trips, I have yet to find better food and better après parties. And I say Utah because it’s, like, pretty hard to beat the greatest snow on earth.

    Well today, both of these places were announced as future hosts of the Winter Olympics. France will host the games in 2030 (once it has successfully met certain conditions) and Utah will host the games in 2034. This is exciting.

    But it was also entirely expected.

    France was the preferred choice since June. And Utah was the only choice for 2034. To host the Winter Games, you generally need to have at least two things: money and snow. And right now, fewer places want to spend the former on something that may or may not generate an ROI, and fewer places are getting the latter.

    Remember this post looking at the impact of climate change on the Winter Olympics?

    Because of these challenges, there is talk of the IOC adopting a permanent rotation of Winter Olympic cities. And Utah has been eagerly positioning itself to be one of the places. Biases aside, this feels like an obvious choice. Salt Lake City has some of the best and most accessible snowboarding in the world (SLC is a great airport) and — most importantly — it still snows there.

    Photo by Alex Moliski on Unsplash

  • Gone snowboardin’

  • 12th annual

    For those of you who are long-time readers of this blog, you might remember that I do an annual ski and snowboard trip with a group of close friends from both Canada and the US. This year should technically be the 14th annual, but we took two years off during the pandemic (though some of us did meet up to ski), and so we’re referring to this as the official 12th annual. The last one was in February 2020 in Fernie, BC, and this weekend we’re off to Park City, Utah.

    This annual trip is something that I look forward to all year. And it has really cemented my love of snowboarding and the mountains. For me, it’s this wonderful combination of outdoor activity, beautiful landscapes, unplugging, and catching up with friends that I have known, in many cases, for over 20 years. In fact, I know that this trip is the reason that a few of us decided to get together to build Parkview Mountain House (our upcoming “creative mountain retreat” in Park City).

    A big part of what we want to do with the house (when it’s hopefully ready next winter) is share our love of the mountains with others. We want others to experience what we experience when we go on these trips. At the same time, we felt like there was a huge gap in the market. Park City is a world-renowned ski and snowboard destination, and yet it still feels hard to find modern and design-focused places to stay. So we decided to create our own.

    There is, however, one small problem: my right knee. It has been bothering me for the last few years whenever I snowboard, and usually only when I snowboard, to the point where I have to get off the mountain. This obviously pisses me off. So I decided to spend the last 2 months training my tender knees with Noah Mandel. We’ll see if that did anything this weekend. But I’m so committed to the mountains that, if it helps, I’m even prepared to switch to skiing!

  • European Alps are home to a third of the world’s ski resorts — but they’re mostly closed

    This winter was supposed to be the 12th edition of a ski and snowboard trip that I do every year with a group of friends from both Canada and the US. Last winter we were in Fernie, British Columbia and this winter we were planning to go to Europe. But for obvious reasons, the trip has been cancelled. It’s going to be a tough season for the ski industry.

    According to this recent FT article, the European Alps are home to more than a third of the world’s 2,084 ski resorts. Typically, these resorts bring in about €28 billion in revenues over the course of a season, which is similarly about a third of the global total and almost 7% of the value of the European Union’s overall tourism market.

    But many/most resorts are closed right now. France has shuttered all ski resorts until at least January 7, 2021. And Switzerland, while “cautiously open,” is apparently getting pressure from its neighbors to close down again as further quarantine restrictions are put in place.

    Interestingly enough, some resorts are already reporting higher than normal early bookings for the 2021-2022 season. This is according to the same FT article. Instead of several hundred early bookings, which would be typical, they’re reporting several thousand. And many of the bookings have moved upmarket compared to prior years.

    What this starts to indicate is that we are likely to see an explosion in travel and leisure spending as soon as people feel safe and as soon as these restrictions are lifted. Demand is getting pent-up right now and that can mean only one thing: the 12th annual ski and snowboard trip needs to be a banger.

    Charts: Financial Times

  • The Penn Annual

    I spent this morning booking the last leg of my flights for my annual ski and snowboarding trip this February. It’s a tradition that a few of us started during grad school at Penn. We call it the “Penn Annual” and we’re now into our fifth year. This year we’re going to Jackson Hole, which has been on the top of my list of places to snowboard for a number of years now.

    We started the Annual because we obviously love to ski and snowboard, but we also did it as a way to reconnect at least once a year. It’s a forced reunion. We pick a spot and all convene. The core group is about 4-5 people. But depending on where we go, it often expands as local friends and family join in. 

    Interestingly enough, we’re apparently a defined target market known as the “brocation” segment. Or at least this is what a marketing guy told us during the Third Annual in Lake Tahoe. So far we’ve been to Tremblant, Stowe, Lake Tahoe and Whistler. We usually alternate between Canada and the US. Next year we’re already thinking it’ll be Banff.

    One of the things we’ve talked about doing since the beginning is turning the The Annual into a larger Penn alumni reunion and networking event. In fact, we’ve parked pennannual.com. If we did this, we could bring down the per person costs, as well as create a much larger pull for participants. I love the idea of staying connected and meeting new Quakers (as well as others).

    Of course this is one of those ideas that usually loses air once the trip is over. But this year I thought I’d put it out there on my blog, and also send the idea over to Penn Alumni. So if you’d like to join us in Jackson Hole, drop me a line.