Aiming at the Bald Demographic
We stopped in Sequoia National Park at Wuksatchi Lodge, thinking that a night in a bed would have its advantages. (It didn't: overpriced, and air circulation through the lodge is absolutely horrible--definitely not worth it. We'd have been happier in our tent down at the Lodgepole campground.)
It was a different kind of place than I had imagined. I had thought it was a replacement for the hotel, cabins, and cafeteria that used to be at the Giants' Forest sequoia grove. But we found not trays and spaghetti-with-meat sauce but waiters and Mediterranean Pasta, Bifstek au Poivre, and Creme Brulee. We found not tube-frame camp beds and knotty pine walls but conference hotel modern.
The National Park Service's contractor appears to be looking for higher margin customers.
There was a card to hang on your door the night before if you wanted them to pack you a boxed lunch (four cheese, smoked turkey with provolone...). There is a picture on the back of the card: a happy family sitting on a sunlit rock high in the Sierra Nevada with a blue sky and high peaks behind them. The man: late forties and heavily balding. The woman: blond and mid-thirties. The child: five.
Marketing aimed at men with money to burn who started thinking seriously about family at age forty (or who started over on family at age forty).
Someone thinks that this is the prime demographic group the Wuksatchi Lodge should be chasing. Given the distribution of disposable income in America, they are probably right.
