Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa team filled with industry experience

Contact: Dave Simpson
Base Camp Communications
(307) 734-7575
dsimpson@base-camp1.com

Rob DesLauriers, Managing Partner

Rob DesLauriers has followed a parallel career track as a ski industry star and a manager and developer in the resort lodging business. Both experiences and time spent skiing at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort led him to create the vision for Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa. He assembled the development group that built the Lodge and remains involved in the operation of the Lodge.

A graduate of the Cornell Hotel School and now a resident of Jackson Hole, DesLauriers has racked up 15 years of experience in hotel management, ski resort marketing and ski industry promotions. He spent seven years working his way from group sales associate to resort general manager and director of marketing at Bolton Valley Ski Resort in Vermont. His responsibilities there included overseeing production and placement of all advertising and promotional materials, direct sales, and day-to-day management of the 146-room hotel and seven food and beverage outlets.

DesLauriers work coupled with his growing reputation as an extreme skiing pioneer prompted him to move west and start his own ski industry promotions business. For more than six years, he has owned, operated and directed Extreme Sports Promotions, the international Extreme Team Advanced Ski Clinics and Straight Up Films. DesLauriers has skied professionally for The North Face and Salomon, starring in over 25 ski films. In addition, he has produced five ski films and led expeditions to ski high altitude peaks in remote corners of the globe. His ski industry contacts are extensive.

Jeff Sargent, General Manager

Jeff Sargent brings nearly two decades of hospitality experience from a wide range of hotels and resorts to Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa. Jeff joins the team from Wild Dunes Resort, a 1,600-acre, 500 unit beach, golf, and tennis resort north of Charleston, S.C.

Jeff's hospitality experience is wide ranging. He has worked in hotel and property management roles for 18 years overseeing rooms divisions, front office operations, consumer affairs and revenue management. He also has helped open five new hotels and also has a held a regional training position in sales and guest service skills for different properties around the U.S.
and Canada.

Most recently, he served as Director of Rooms at Wild Dunes and, before that, as Front Office Manager at Washington, D.C.'s Monarch Hotel. Sargent worked for seven years with Hyatt Hotels at four different properties and seven years with Marriott. Jeff holds a degree in hotel and restaurant institutional management from Pennsylvania State University.

John Wabs, Executive Chef

Bringing culinary experience from fine-dining establishments in locations as diverse as Colorado mountain country and Switzerland, John Wabs directs the New Western-influenced menu at Cascade Grill House & Spirits. He also oversees all aspects of culinary operations at the Lodge from the dining room to room service, catering and support for meetings and special events.

Wabs, a culinary arts graduate of Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, brings 11 years of fine-dining experience to Teton Mountain Lodge & Spa. Other career highlights include fine-dining experience at La Parisienne, Bleu Angel and Pod in Philadelphia, where Wabs specialized in French bistro-style cuisine and Asian Fusion; two years in Switzerland at Restaurant Zueghauskeller, with a focus on German dining; and two years at the Inverness Hotel and Golf Club and the Brown Palace, both in Denver, Colo. At the Inverness, Wabs was part of a team that managed $16-$18 million in banquets each year.

Laura Cuddie, Director of Sales and Marketing

Hired to oversee oversee Teton Mountain Lodge & Spas sales department and all marketing efforts, Laura Cuddie brings nine years of management and marketing experience in resort lodging to her post.

Before joining the Lodge team, Cuddie worked for Premier Resorts, where she oversaw marketing and resort management at Park City and Deer Valley, Utah, as well as in Sun Valley, Idaho. Most recently, she was employed as assistant general manager of The Chateaux at Silver Lake, a 146-unit condominium hotel in Park City. Prior to that, she was assistant general manager of 220 rental properties in Sun Valley. In earlier experience, Cuddie worked for more than two years as international marketing manager and director of owner services for Deer Valley Lodging in Utah. She also holds a hospitality management diploma from the American Hotel and Lodging Association and is a graduate of the Park City Municipal Corporations Leadership 2000 program.