A new hotel coming to town will replace the Highlands Inn Lodge and the adjacent Log Cabin restaurant this July.
Called Trailborn Highlands, it’s the second such project by the Trailborn hospitality company planning to debut hotels all over the country at various outdoors wilderness locations. They opened two in Estes Park, Colorado last year, and Trailborn Highlands will be the third one.
The Log Cabin restaurant, based in a historic building built in 1924, closed its doors more than a year ago.
According to information provided by the company, Trailborn Highlands will offer 63 guest rooms, while the Log Cabin restaurant will be turned into a new restaurant venue serving Southern food.
Trailborn Highlands will also offer an extensive list of features, including a Nordic spa with a sauna and cold plunge showers and varying excursions visitors can go on – including mushroom foraging and hikes.
Co-CEO and co-founder Mike Weiss said they wanted to open Trailborn locations in places Weiss and his family would want to vacation – so it stands to reason others would want to visit those places, too. He spoke highly of Highlands, calling it “one of the most beautiful places he’d ever been to.”
“For my business partner and I, life should be an adventure,” he said. “Sitting behind a desk all day, sitting in an office, is not fulfilling. There are too many beautiful places in the world that people should see, so we want to make places for people to stay at and see. We want to give a well-rounded experience. People can go to a great place and then come back to a comfortable hotel.”
Weiss said the goal was to make hotels that were “the type of travel I want to do with my wife and two daughters,” and said they aimed to keep things affordable.
One of their goals with Trailborn Highlands is to make the hotel feel like a uniquely secluded mountain experience. That comes down to even the placement of the building.
“It’s set back on kind of a winding road,” Weiss said. “It’s surrounded by trees… we wanted it to be private and comfortable. We wanted you to feel like you’re in the mountains and the woods. That’s how you feel in Highlands.”
Weiss said Trailborn tries to give back to the local community wherever they open hotels – in Highlands, it will partner with Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust, which works to conserve natural land and resources in the area.
Weiss said a portion of every booking at Trailborn Highlands would go to the trust.
“We want to protect the natural beauty. We want to do our part to help for the long term,” he said.
While Trailborn Highlands didn’t have a specific date to open as of press time, Weiss confirmed the hotel would be open in July of this year and would have a soft opening sometime in the beginning of that month.
On Friday morning, April 19, the hotel was full of activity as construction workers remodeled the main hotel and Trailborn Highlands general manager Jennifer LaRue was conducting interviews for staff positions.
Trailborn is just getting started – Weiss said they have projects going in several other areas including the Grand Canyon and Mendocino, California. Closer to home, they’re also planning a location at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.
Weiss didn’t offer specific timelines for those locations either but said Trailborn already has property in all three locations and the hotels would be coming in the “not so distant future.”