Q&A: Johannes von Trapp: Doing business in Vermont's hills

Vermont Business Magazine, Mar 01, 2001 by Smith, Robert

Johannes von Trapp is the youngest member of what has to be the most famous family in Vermont, and arguably one of the most famous in the country. Trapp is the youngest son of Maria von Trapp, whose marriage to Baron von Trapp and their adventures as The Trapp Family Singers - including an escape from the Nazis - has become a part of America's mythology through the Broadway musical and movie "The Sound of Music." The Von Trapp family has called Vermont home for well over half a century, and has made a considerable impact on the state. Johannes von Trapp is credited with creating the first cross-country ski center at the Trapp Family Lodge in 1968, which spawned a national industry.

From a 27-room facility in the 1950s, Johannes von Trapp has overseen the expansion of the Lodge into one of the premier year-round resorts in the country, with the ability to accommodate 1,000 guests at a time. The luxurious facilities, numerous activities, world-class cuisine, and summer concerts are just a few of the things that make the Trapp Family Lodge a special place to stay. In 1996 Snow Country magazine called it the finest cross-country ski resort in the country, and readers of Conde Nast Traveler's magazine voted it one of the 15 best overall ski resorts in North America.

Robert Smith interviewed Johannes von Trapp at his offices at the Lodge the day after one of the winter's major storms in early February. To say the mountain setting was spectacular that day is something of an understatement.

VBM: To begin with, could you give me a little bit of the history of the Trapp Family Lodge, and what has happened here in recent years?

Von Trapp: Sure. When we first came to this country my family was living in Philadelphia. We traveled around the country singing and performing as the Trapp Family Singers. The family knew that we didn't want to live in Philadelphia. I say "we," but I was only two or three years old at the time, as I was born in Philadelphia just after we arrived from Europe.

VBM: And you're how old now?

Von Trapp: Sixty-two - but going on twenty-one. Well, each one of my brothers and sisters had a particular like or dislike as to what they wanted to do. Some perhaps liked Colorado, some liked the South or the Southwest. But when we came to Vermont, we found a state that really reminded my family very much of Austria in terms of the cultural landscape: the village, usually with a church with a tall steeple. It might be a different religion, but that didn't matter. It was so reminiscent of our home. The outlying farms, the mountains. The landscape was more reminiscent of Austria in its cultural manifestations than the West was.

My family stumbled on to this place here, which was for sale. At the time, much more land was cleared than there is now, and the views were just extraordinary. It was a lovely October day, and they just fell in love with the place. They bought the original three hundred acres, and then the following spring moved up from Philadelphia and bought the next three hundred acres. So we had six hundred acres. We built our home here, which the family named Cor Unum - One Heart.

VBM: How many of you were there?

Von Trapp: Ten children, my father and mother, and a priest, who was our conductor. He was not a relative, but he traveled with us for 20 years.

We farmed for a number of years. We had a dairy farm. Then my father died in 1947 - we'd moved here in '42 and my mother realized that it was going to be difficult to support a large family on this property by farming. At the same time, there was a tremendous need for rooms for skiers, because the ski industry had developed on Mount Mansfield, but the appropriate accommodations had not yet developed. So there was a great shortage of rooms.

So, while we were away singing and traveling around the world, our rooms were rented out to skiers, and that's how we started into the hotel business. In 1949 and '50 we completed a new wing on the building and added a number of rooms, and we say that in 1950 we started in the guest business.

That structure burned down in 1980, and when we rebuilt, we rebuilt as a hotel. The old house had great charm, and with it a lot of challenges to meet the expectations of the customers. The new building has the physical plant, and the challenge here is to create the charm that the customer expects. I think we're really learning how to do that.

VBM: You've made some additions and expanded up here over the last several years. You've been involved in running this since ...?

Von Trapp: I took over the business in 1969. I'd just gotten my masters in forest ecology, and was planning on going on for a doctorate, but I thought I'd take two years off and straighten out the business, install professional management and then go back to school. I never went back.

VBM: So what changes have you made here? And as a forest ecologist, I wonder what your take is on development in Vermont? What are your ideas on how we can both have development and still maintain the ecology?