Where Do All the Billionaires Stay at Sun Valley?

FarahTravel2025-07-103440

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For about 360 days out of the year, Sun Valley Resort is a family-friendly destination known for its ski town charms in the winter and its plethora of plein air western pursuits come summer. Just as long as your dates don’t coincide with the few days in mid-July when it turns into “summer camp for billionaires.”

Since 1983, Sun Valley has hosted the Allen & Co. conference, an annual gathering organized by the private investment firm that draws a kidnapper’s wish list of tech bros, media titans, finance whizzes, POTUS wannabes, and their C-suite consiglieri to this tiny Idaho mountain locale. They—and by they we mean the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Bob Iger, David Zaslav, Sam Altman, Barry Diller, Ted Sarandos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Rupert Murdoch and his number one boy Lachlan, all of whom made it onto this year’s invite list—pack up their best normcore (translation: Loro Piana) and filter in on their PJs to mingle, talk shop, and make deals.

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This is allegedly where Bezos got his idea to buy The Washington Post back in 2013—and also where, a few years after that, the Amazon boss debuted a newly cut physique, much to the Internet’s derision and delight. In between networking sessions and seminars on how to solve the world’s problems (A.I. is top on the docket this year), these masters of the universe go on hikes, ride bikes, hang by the pool, and play golf. The rest of us can only assume Succession’s Argestes episode (season 2.6) is a close enough approximation of the general vibe of these things.

And although this is typically a crowd that has more than enough resources to score a palatial pad a la Mountainhead somewhere in the hills for those few days, everyone stays at the Sun Valley Lodge, a 108-room property where rates start at around $500 a night. (Billionaires—they’re just like us!) Those who spring for the suites get soaking tubs, fireplaces, and more closet space to fit those Brunello vests. Sure, it may not be an Aman, but what the the hotel lacks in high thread counts and high-tech accoutrements it makes up for in rich history.

The annual Allen & Co. conference kicked off July 8 at the Sun Valley Lodge. Kevin Dietsch - Getty Images

Sun Valley was the brainchild of businessman and railroad scion (and later governor of New York) W. Averell Harriman, who scoured the Wild West to find the perfect spot to build the country’s first destination ski resort—modeled after Swiss sprawls like St. Moritz—to which affluent Americans would have to travel via his trains (Harriman was chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad). He found the place in 1936; Sun Valley Resort was completed in seven months for $1.5 million (about $35 mil today). The Sun Valley Lodge officially opened in December 1936.

The celebrities soon started pouring in, among them Clark Gable, Ingrid Bergman, Gary Cooper, Lucille Ball, and Marilyn Monroe. But no one took to Sun Valley as enthusiastically as Ernest Hemingway, who loved it so much he split his time between here and Cuba. In 1939, he finished For Whom the Bell Tolls while staying at the lodge, in suite 206, and by the late ’50s, he had become an official resident of nearby Ketchum.

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Modern celebrities still love Sun Valley, too. Clint Eastwood, Demi Moore, and Tom Hanks have homes here, as does Arnold Schwarzenegger, who even has a ski run named after him.