I'm not sure from where, but there wasn't enough of them. Tillotson did it as a hobby essentially. He made a bunch of money off his balloon invention, moved to NH and bought an old grand hotel like he'd stay in as a child. A friend of mine whose family has owned a classic hotel property on Cape Cod for 100+ years knew him well. Said the property rarely turned a profit. Once he died the family didn't have much interest in losing more money.
So, there really isn't a recent history perspective on how to run the place profitably and where to draw customers from. I'm guessing Montreal is the prime target, then Boston.
According to data on the New England Ski History website, they were only pulling in 22-34k skier visits some years. That's incredibly low. So agreed that where those people came from is pretty much irrelevant.