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ROI of Bike Parks
The second keynote addressed the proverbial elephant in the
room—the ROI of a bike park. This panel brought together
Windham’s Seamans; Mike Solimano, president and GM of
Killington Resort; Mark Hayes, president of Highland Bike
Park, NH; and Jon Schaefer, GM of Berkshire East, Mass.
Moderated by Bob Holme, Trestle Bike Park’s GM, the dis-
cussion brought the unique perspectives of four parks at dif-
ferent phases of development.
Both Windham and Thunder Mountain (Berkshire
East) are new parks with different backgrounds, and
Killington has had biking for many years but only recently
invested in developing beyond the traditional technical
(think natural, root-y and rock-y) trails to the flow-y freeride ing customers—new and experienced—coming back to
trails popular with downhill bikers now.
Highland Bike Park is unique in that it is exclusively
a bike park, started by Hayes more than 12 years ago at a
shuttered ski area. Consistent across all areas is the desire to
move past simply offering biking to having a bike park that
is an attraction and a reason for people to come to the area.
For Killington, the bike park became an integral part of
a comprehensive plan for summer development. After fac-
ing years of declining summer visits, the area went into the
planning process intentionally looking to develop sum-
mer into a viable business season, bringing in visits and fill-
ing beds. While this included the installation of a mountain
coaster, the Skyeride zipline, and other adventure activi-
ties, the bike park has become central to the resort’s sum-
mer operations with incremental increased investment in
trail development. Without going into detail, Solimano indi-
cated that this approach has enabled Killington to keep the
bike park financially viable with margins looking good for
the long term.
For Highland, financial success is the only option.
Without skier visits in the winter to provide revenue to sup-
port summer development, Hayes has hung his hat on
creating a sustainable business model that depends on keep-
Highland. By thoughtfully developing more demanding
trails that keep passionate core customers happy as well as
beginner trails for new bikers, Highland has steadily grown
its visits and profitability year-over-year.
As forthcoming as they come, Hayes shared an ROI
model he developed where a park can grow from 3,000 vis-
its in year one to almost 25,000 visits by year five (see figure
1). Central to Highland’s business model is its focus on kids,