Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa

The Hotel

The Mountain View Grand began as William and Maryjane Dodge's overnight stopover for a stranded Montreal stagecoach in 1865 and operated continuously as the Mountain View House under the Dodge family through 1979, accommodating more than 200 guests by 1912 when the Belvedere Tower was added. The hotel survived the collapse of the New England grand-resort era through the 1950s and 60s but closed in 1986 after 122 seasons, sat in foreclosure for a decade, and was acquired by the Massachusetts general contractor Kevin Craffey in 1998 for $1.3 million including the 400-acre grounds, the nine-hole golf course, and the conference hall. A $20 million renovation followed and the hotel reopened on May 22, 2002 as the Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa.

The 141 guestrooms were rebuilt from a prior 200-room programme: each unit was meaningfully enlarged, the historic-hotel windows restored, the bathrooms rebuilt to a contemporary specification while preserving the original-era detail. The Belvedere Tower at the eastern end of the building was preserved as a guest amenity, the open-to-the-public observation deck with the panoramic 360-degree view of the full Presidential Range (Mount Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison) and the four-room Tower Suite collection on the floors below. Room categories run from the Standard Mountain View Room through the Junior Suites with separate sitting areas to the four Tower Suites and the Presidential Suite.

The amenity programme is the property's central differentiator from the larger Omni: the 7,500-square-foot Tower Spa with twelve treatment rooms and a heated indoor mineral-water pool, the nine-hole executive golf course on property (the full 18-hole programme runs at Bretton Woods 25 minutes away), the equestrian centre with trail rides through the 400 acres, the Mountain View Falconry programme (the in-house master falconer), the cross-country and snowshoe network, the on-property dog-sled programme, and the conservatory dining room (the McGarry's, with the original 1912 stained-glass ceiling). The property runs a strong wellness programme that the Omni does not match, the Tower Spa is widely regarded as the better treatment programme in the White Mountains.

The defining proposition is the value-and-personality combination. The Mountain View runs at thirty percent below the Omni's rate card on equivalent room categories; the property's owner-managed character is more intimate than the corporate-flagship feel of the Omni; the location twenty-five miles north of Bretton Woods Ski Area is the only meaningful trade. For the guest who wants the grand-hotel experience without the grand-hotel price, or for the guest who returns to the White Mountains every year and rotates between the two grand resorts, the Mountain View is the secret-handshake booking. The Belvedere Tower view alone closes the case.

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