SkiStar Brand Guidelines: A 1975 Sälen Cabin Village, a 1994 Listing & Resorts to Trysil

Two builders buy a cabin village in Sälen.

SkiStar is a Swedish ski-resort operator listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, with its head office in Sälen, in Dalarna. Its story starts in 1975, when the brothers Erik and Mats Paulsson, who had also founded the construction company Peab, bought the ski resort at Lindvallen in Sälen, according to the company and Swedish Wikipedia. Aftonbladet told the story in August 2023: the brothers went to Lindvallen meaning to buy a cabin their company’s staff could use, and instead bought the whole cabin village and began running it as a commercial resort. The brothers came from Skåne, in the far south of Sweden, and Peab had grown out of road and building work there, the paper noted.

Sources differ on the early company name. English Wikipedia says the business was called Sälenstjärnan AB from its foundation in 1975 until 2001; SkiStar’s own timeline says that Lindvallen i Sälen AB was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1994, and Swedish Wikipedia places that listing on the exchange’s O-list.

Growth came through purchases. In 1997 the company bought Tandådalen and Hundfjället, which together with Lindvallen made up one resort under the name Sälen, Swedish Wikipedia says. It added Åre and Vemdalen in 1999 and Hemsedal, in Norway, in 2000. After those purchases, in 2001, the group took the name SkiStar, the company says. Trysil, also in Norway, followed in 2005. Aftonbladet summed up the result in 2023 by calling SkiStar one of Europe’s largest companies in its industry.

Five mountain destinations and a city slope.

SkiStar today runs ski areas in Sälen, Åre and Vemdalen in Sweden and Trysil and Hemsedal in Norway, plus the city slope at Hammarbybacken in Stockholm, according to English and Swedish Wikipedia; the company’s timeline records the opening of a new Stockholm Hammarbybacken in 2022. Its business has two segments: Mountain Resorts, covering ski areas, lifts and accommodation, and SkiStarshop, which covers shops, rental, online sales and an own-label brand, EQPE.

Abroad, it has tried and stepped back. In December 2011 it began a one-year operating agreement with the Andermatt and Sedrun ski areas in Switzerland, and in April 2016 it bought a majority holding in St. Johann in Tirol, in Austria, which it sold in May 2021, Swedish Wikipedia says.

SkiStar has also invested in getting guests to the mountains. Swedish Wikipedia says the privately owned Sälen Trysil Airport, now called Scandinavian Mountains Airport, was built between 2017 and 2019 with SkiStar as a large part-owner; the company says the airport, between Sälen and Trysil, has direct flights from nine European destinations. Its year-end report of September 2026 names recent additions: a new ski area, Hovde Syd, in Vemdalen; a new gondola in Trysil; lighting and a new lift at Björnen in Åre; and destination passes for parts of the ski systems, such as Klövsjö and Storhogna in Vemdalen, sold alongside the regular SkiPass. In 2025 it said international guests made up around 40 percent of its winter guest nights.

Sponsorship gives the name wider reach. Swedish Wikipedia says SkiStar has sponsored the Swedish alpine ski team since 2004 and has been title sponsor of the Swedish Open tennis tournament in Båstad since 2010.

Design and documentation.

Ski resort operators sell a place before they sell a product, so much of their public image is built from the mountain itself: lifts, groomed runs and snow-covered peaks, photographed and published by the companies themselves. The corporate site of Alterra Mountain Company goes a step further, printing map coordinates beside its mountain images. Each resort’s own pages carry the practical layer — lift and run status, webcams and a trail map. When Deer Valley added 200 acres and seven runs for its 2026/27 season, Alterra announced them by acreage and by the name of the new lift.

Naming is a large part of the work. Trails, lifts and bowls carry their own names, and new lifts are announced by name: Deer Valley’s Keetley Express and Hail Peak Express are two from its recent expansion. Above the resorts sit pass products. Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass and Alterra’s Ikon Pass, launched in January 2018, group many mountains under one season pass, and Alterra says the Ikon Pass now reaches more than 70 destinations. Pass tiers, partner days and reservation rules become part of the vocabulary skiers learn.

Digital tools extend that system. Resort websites invite visitors to download a mobile app, and some groups have bought the technology behind their sales: Alterra says it acquired Aspenware, a resort e-commerce and technology business, in May 2022. At Alterra, loyalty is framed through pass benefits, such as an extra night for pass holders who stay three nights at Deer Valley and discounted lift tickets for friends and family.

Behind the resort names sits a quieter corporate layer of pages on owners, leadership, values and portfolios. When Alterra was named in 2018, The Denver Post reported that the aim was not to forge a new brand but to build a platform that would elevate the individuality of each resort. Deer Valley’s own website keeps its name up front and links to Alterra Mountain Company in its footer.

A booking site, an app and one name.

Much of SkiStar’s brand lives online. The company says 73 percent of its sales take place on skistar.com, which it calls its largest sales channel, and that gathering sales on the site and in the SkiStar app gives it a direct relationship with guests. On 1 December 2011 it launched MySkistar, an app built with Ninetech and linked to each skier’s lift pass, which records vertical metres skied, collectable pins and statistics; Swedish Wikipedia says it had more than 300,000 registered users in early 2015, passed 500,000 members in summer 2016 and was renamed Skistar Game in summer 2023.

The company describes itself as “the leading holiday organiser for Scandinavia” and gives its aim as creating “memorable mountain experiences,” with alpine skiing in winter and active holidays in summer. Its timeline records the launch of SkiStar Sports & Adventures in 2021 and its 50th anniversary in 2025. Swedish Wikipedia divides the business into four product areas — the lift and piste systems, ski school and guiding, rental and sports shops, and accommodation booking — and notes summer downhill cycling and lift rides for hikers at several destinations. The company says that in 2024/25, 97 percent of its winter guests went alpine skiing and 54 percent stayed six days or more. The spelling varies: Swedish Wikipedia gives Skistar with SkiStar as an alternative, English Wikipedia says it is marketed in lower case as “skistar,” and the company’s investor pages write SkiStar.

SkiStar’s shareholder list, based on Euroclear Sweden data as of November 2026, shows Ekhaga Utveckling AB as the largest holder, with about a quarter of the capital and close to half the votes, followed by Nordic Ski & Mountains AB and Handelsbanken Fonder. Its chief executive since 2020 is Stefan Sjöstrand, Swedish Wikipedia says.

For a design guide, SkiStar shows a resort group whose own name carries the booking site, the app and the shops across Sweden and Norway. Compare Compagnie des Alpes, another listed European resort operator, and POWDR, a privately held American group. For this guide we use a spruce ink, snow white, birch grey and a lingonberry red with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep SkiStar’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.