hotelHotel Impossible · Season 2, Episode 5 · Aired January 14, 2013
Glacier Bear Lodge
Yakutat, Alaska
This one survived. It remains in business.
On the show
Season 2, Episode 5 · January 14, 2013 · lodge
Revisited in Hotel Impossible Undercover episode UC01 (aired 2014-01-06); not a new business, no separate row.
What happened after
Fishing lodge/hotel/restaurant/bar; official site live, 2026 guest reviews confirm current operations.
What happened on the show
Few Hotel Impossible subjects sat as far off the grid as the Glacier Bear Lodge in Yakutat, a remote Alaskan fishing town where the lodge doubled as hotel, restaurant, and bar for a community and a trickle of sportsmen. The isolation shaped everything: a limited market, a short high season, and no room for an operation that could not serve its narrow clientele well. Melchiorri took the measure of the rooms, the kitchen and the bar, and how the lodge presented itself to the anglers and travelers who made it that far north, then pushed ownership to run the whole multi-part operation with more discipline. His guidance pointed toward leaning into the fishing-lodge identity and the remote-Alaska adventure it promised, giving guests a reason to book a genuinely hard-to-reach property and to come back. The stakes were survival in a place with very little passing trade.
After the cameras left
The Glacier Bear is still open on the Alaska coast, and the show came back to check. The lodge was revisited in a 2014 Hotel Impossible Undercover episode, and as of our 2026 verification the fishing lodge, hotel, restaurant and bar at 812 Glacier Bear Avenue is operating, with a live official site and recent traveler reviews confirming current business. Its review average sits strong and its social following runs into the thousands. For a lodge this remote, staying open and active more than a decade on is its own kind of success. Confirmed operating as of 2026.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.
What is there now
Street imagery via Google Maps. Location approximate.