Michael S. Shannon, cofounder of KSL Capital Partners LLC, will be the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS) in Los Angeles at the end of this month.
“It’s a special and unique honor that I share with my 100,000-plus KSL Capital Partners colleagues who live and work across the globe searching for opportunities to serve our guests and invest in our colleague’s careers,” he told Hotel Business. “I am particularly grateful to receive this award knowing that so many industry icons who I have long respected, like Bill Marriott, Katie Taylor and Tom Pritzker, have been prior recipients of this prestigious award. We all share a common passion for taking great care of our guests and seeking out investments in new tourism experiences.”
As befits anyone receiving the award, which is presented to an individual who has made significant contributions to the hospitality industry through their actions, deeds and great accomplishments, Shannon has a long—and accomplished—career in hospitality. He served as president/CEO of Vail Associates Inc. (owner of Vail and Beaver Creek Resorts) in Vail, CO, from 1986 to 1992. He then went on to establish KSL Recreation with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, serving as its president/CEO. After its sale in 2004, he cofounded and became CEO of KSL Resorts. He cofounded KSL Capital Partners in 2005.
Since 2005, KSL Capital Partners has raised more than $15 billion in equity capital commitments in travel and leisure businesses.
“Perhaps this award recognizes the amazing resilience of the individual travel and leisure segment during this pandemic and KSL’s longstanding role in these vital industry segments,” he said. “In times of duress, since our founding in the 1980s, we have observed that the consumers worldwide have always sought to escape, recharge and reflect on their lives by traveling to nearby safe havens with family. The last two years of the pandemic have shown the remarkable desire by people to travel, albeit close to home, and stay active in outdoor recreation. Who would have thought that so many individual travelers would have flocked to our golf and ski resorts in such large numbers?”
While Shannon has had a number of accomplishments throughout his career, he said that the most memorable is “surviving” his first hospitality job in 1986 as president of Vail Associates. “Imagine the shock of our Vail community when a 27-year-old media banker with no hospitality experience gets hired by the new owner (George Gillett) as CEO of Vail Associates and is now supposed to be leading several thousand mountain-hardened career ski enthusiasts into the future,” he said. “Fortunately, being young and open-minded allowed us to take a hospitality service-minded and family-oriented approach to skiing, which resulted in us becoming North America’s No. 1-rated ski destination. Over the years, we branched out globally to invest in the growing leisure and hospitality business.”
He also had the opportunity to be mentored by some industry legends throughout his career—even before he got started in hospitality. “I had the good fortune when I was at First Chicago [as a media banker]that one of my best clients was the Marriott family…Dick and Bill Marriott were both investors in a very large, successful radio business called First Media and I was their banker. So, I got to know hospitality by accident through Bill and Dick Marriott…We became lifelong friends.”
He cited other mentors including Gillett and Frank Wells at Disney. “I am incredibly grateful to Henry Kravis and George Roberts who allowed me to take my operating experiences and join them as business entrepreneurs,” he said.
Shannon has loved his time in hospitality. “I loved the idea of combining the opportunity combine my avocation (love for the outdoors) with my vocation (in the wonderful family-oriented town of Vail),” he said. “The hospitality industry is blessed with so many can-do positive personalities that I have had the good fortune to get to know.”
