W Hotel Aspen Owner Eyes Sale in Ski Resort Where Deals Are Rare
Bloomberg - May 5, 2026 - Northridge Capital is seeking a buyer for the W Hotel Aspen, a sale that would be the first for a slopeside resort in the upscale Colorado town since 2010.
The firm is seeking as much as $175 million for the 88-room property, Northridge Chief Executive Officer David Jackson said in an interview. At $2 million a room, that valuation would be at the high end nationally; last month, Braemar Hotels & Resorts Inc. said it had agreed to sell a Park Hyatt resort in Beaver
Creek, Colorado, for just over $900,000 per room.
Such properties rarely hit the market around the mountain, and new construction has been limited by land use restrictions that are among the most strict in the country. The supply constraints have kept Aspen prices high: Room rates are up 45% from pre-Covid levels, growing at nearly double the rate of the
national average.
“Many ski resorts view themselves as places that attracts tourists, and as a result, they’re relatively receptive to development,” Jackson said. “Aspen is the opposite. It views itself as someplace very special, and it is.” Marriott International Inc., which owns the W brand, will continue to operate the hotel.
The W is coming to market at a time when the growing wealth of the upper classes is boosting high-end travel, and the cost and complexity of building luxury hotels is making it hard for real estate developers to keep up with demand.
As of March, construction had started on just 81 luxury hotels, according to data from CoStar Group Inc., with the number of rooms down 40% from 2019.
“I think we’re going to see interest from all corners of the investor universe,” said Kevin Davis, chief executive officer of the hotel practice at Jones Lang Lasalle, which is working with Northridge to market the W. Northridge bought the property, then known as the Aspen Club Lodge, for $20 million in 2001, Jackson said. The company changed its name to the Sky Hotel and hired Kimpton to manage it.
The location was perfect, sitting just a few hundred feet from the Silver Queen Gondola. But the facility eventually grew dated. In 2017, Jackson’s firm closed the property and started anew. When the W opened two years later, it was the first new ground-up hotel to open in Aspen since 1992.
Covid forced the hotel to shutter before it found its footing but eventually unleashed a revenge-travel boom that boosted US hotels. The pandemic also delayed Jackson’s plans to sell the property. Now, he said, his investors are ready to deploy their capital into other deals.
