Sundance's Opening Weekend Triples the Booked Share of Big Boulder Airbnbs Near Its Venues
Kuvy Ax, a Boulder Airbnb Superhost, is weighing whether to rent out her house for the Sundance Film Festival. "I'm worried about having parties in my house while I'm away," she told 5280 this month.
Visitors have already started booking. Homes with three or more bedrooms near Pearl Street and the University of Colorado campus are 46% booked for the festival's opening Friday and Saturday, three times the share of nights booked on their mid-January weekends, according to AirROI, a short-term-rental data firm, which tracked 562 short-stay Airbnb homes around Boulder as of early September.
Farther out, big homes are booked at less than twice their mid-January share. Across all the homes tracked, 40% of opening-weekend nights are taken, against about 16% on mid-January weekends.
Those calendars sit more than four months out. Airbnb expects the rush to come late: for big events, "we really see our largest growth in actual bookings in the final weeks ahead of the event," company spokesperson Kevin Munoz told 9NEWS in August.
In Park City, Utah, which the festival left after four decades, the same weekend is going the other way. At this point a year ago, it was booked well ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend on Park City's Airbnb calendar. Now it trails the holiday, 12% booked to 16%, with most nights on both weekends still open.
Sundance's public pass sale opens Oct. 15. "One of the main reasons we moved the Festival to Boulder was the ever-increasing cost of lodging for our attendees, so it's been very much on our minds, from a long-term sustainability perspective," Paula DuPré Pesmen, the Sundance Institute's managing director of festival and institute operations, told the Daily Camera in June.
Within 2 miles of the screens
Near the core, every size of home is booked at roughly two to three times its mid-January share; studios and one-bedrooms, among the most booked at about half, start from a busier January.
| Size | Booked, opening weekend | Booked, mid-January weekends | Median booked nightly price, opening weekend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studio or 1 bedroom | 52% | 25% | $285 |
| 2 bedrooms | 40% | 14% | $530 |
| 3 bedrooms | 43% | 15% | $1,095 |
| 4+ bedrooms | 49% | 15% | $1,760 |
The typical booking that includes opening Friday runs about a week.
5280 found cheaper listings, near $300 a room, going first. A three-bedroom out in Gunbarrel raised its festival price to $1,825 a night and remained unbooked. On the calendars, big homes that far from downtown are the laggards.
Visit Boulder, which helps run the city-endorsed Boulder Festival Lodging Program, tells hosts on its festival lodging page that homes "priced competitively — rather than significantly inflated for the Festival — are far more likely to book."
Munoz told 9NEWS that searches for Boulder were up more than 500%. Sponsored content in the Daily Camera, citing Airbnb internal data, measures a similar rise against searches made a year earlier for the same late-January week, when the festival was still in Park City.
At this point last year, that late-January weekend in Boulder was about as busy as the mid-January weekends before it. This year, across all homes, its booked share is about two and a half times theirs.
What festival nights are selling for
Among 420 Boulder homes on Airbnb in both years, AirROI's data show, those already booked for opening weekend went for a median of about 50% more than the same homes' asking or booked price for that weekend a year earlier, when Boulder had no festival. Those still open are asking about 70% more.
Ordinary winter weekend nights, listed or booked, are up 11% to 20%. Near the core, big homes already booked went for nearly double.
Two four-bedroom houses less than a mile from the festival core are both booked for opening weekend.
One booked in June at about $690 a night, close to what it asked for that weekend a year earlier. The other booked in early September at about $3,100 a night; a year earlier it had listed the same weekend at about $1,200.
"Having more lodging options helps keep prices down while allowing more locals to benefit from this major event in their community," Alex Folsom, Airbnb's Colorado policy manager, told Boulder Reporting Lab in June.
More than 1,300 rentals, counting festival and standard short-term licenses, could advertise for the festival by mid-August, Cate Stanek, a spokesperson for the city's planning department, told The Denver Gazette. City staff had estimated last year that the new rules could add more than 1,000 festival rentals, Boulder Reporting Lab reported.
On Airbnb, about the same number of entire homes were listed around Boulder in early September as a year earlier. The company announced its $200 offer in mid-August.
Tim Komarek, a Colorado State University economist, wrote in an Aug. 5 op-ed in the Loveland Reporter-Herald that at events such as Austin's SXSW, extra listings cut into hotels' peak pricing power. Short-term rentals, he wrote, "cause hotel prices to rise less than they otherwise would."
Jill Grano, who was coordinating housing for the festival's move at the time, told CBS Colorado in June that some early listings "were priced really high" on rumors of what Park City hosts could get. "Thankfully, I think we're starting to see a lot of those come down," she said.
As of early September, big homes near the core still open for opening weekend were asking more than those already booked: a median of about $2,730 a night for four or more bedrooms, against $1,760 booked.
Park City's missing weekend
For Park City, the festival fell in a post-holiday lull. During its last edition there, which closed Feb. 1, short-stay Airbnb homes around town were about half booked, against under a third in the two weeks before. Opening weekend hit 64%, against 43% on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
Across roughly 2,900 homes, the festival's nights brought in about $3.6 million more in nightly rates than a stretch of the same length in the weeks around them. That averages about $1,200 a home, and homes near Main Street and its Egyptian Theatre took about $2.1 million of the total.
A year ago at this point, the festival weekend sat at or near the top of Park City's Airbnb calendar for the winter. Now it ranks at or near the bottom of the nine January and February weekends, near Main Street as across town. Homes still open that weekend are asking about $670 a night, roughly what they ask for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and the same holds near Main Street.
Mayor Ryan Dickey told SFGATE in February that the pandemic years without a festival brought "two extra weekends that were just monster ski weekends, and we expect to have that again."
"I know room rates won't be as high," Randy Barton, owner of the Egyptian Theatre, told SFGATE in February. Near his Main Street theater, homes still open for the old festival weekend are asking about what they ask for Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
About the data: Booked share divides booked nights by booked and open nights on Airbnb calendars as of early September 2026, for entire homes taking stays under 28 nights within 7.5 miles of each town. Price changes compare the same homes a year apart.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, with a city license. Boulder's Festival Lodging Rental License lets owners, and tenants with the property owner's approval, rent for 29 days or fewer a year, from 10 days before the festival to nine days after it, for a $190 fee for a four-year license, or a $75 fee for a one-year license on a unit with a long-term rental license, plus a $25 business license fee per unit. There is no deadline, but applications take two to six weeks to process; unincorporated Boulder County has no festival license, so hosts there should file a complete standard application by Nov. 1.
Near Pearl Street and the CU campus, opening-weekend Airbnb nights that had booked by early September went for a median of about $1,095 in three-bedroom homes and $1,760 in homes with four or more bedrooms. Homes still open that weekend were asking more. Visit Boulder, which helps run the city-endorsed Boulder Festival Lodging Program, tells hosts that competitively priced homes are far more likely to book than inflated ones.
About two in five are for opening weekend. As of early September, 40% of opening-weekend nights at short-stay Airbnb entire homes around Boulder were booked, against about 16% on mid-January weekends, and Airbnb expects its biggest growth in bookings in the final weeks. The festival runs from Jan. 21 through Jan. 31, 2027, at venues within about two miles of the Pearl Street Mall and CU campus, and the public pass sale opens Oct. 15 at 10 a.m. Mountain time.
Airbnb is offering $200 to first-time hosts who list for the festival. According to the Daily Camera, the listing must be for an entire home, be open in January 2027, have a January booking confirmed by Dec. 31 and cost at least $100 before taxes, and 5280 reported that hosts can't have had an active listing before Aug. 1.
Park City Mountain has booked a new event into the old festival weekend: Shaun White's Snow League is scheduled there from Jan. 21 through Jan. 23. As of early September, that weekend was about 12% booked on Park City's Airbnb calendar, behind Martin Luther King Jr. weekend at about 16%. The Park City Chamber says its ski season outlook gives it reason for optimism.