When Boulder was selected to host the Sundance Film Festival, one expectation was that accommodations would be less expensive than in Park City, Utah, where festival attendees competed for rooms with ski tourists.
But dozens of homes in Boulder have already been listed for more than $5,000 per night during the festival, far above what several festival regulars said they paid in Park City. Property managers expect prices to fall as more listings enter the market and overpriced homes go unbooked. In the meantime, early listings are already pushing some attendees to consider staying elsewhere.
That could reshape the festival from a walkable, communal event into a fragmented one that generates more traffic and fewer economic benefits for local businesses. It would also be a blow to Boulder’s financial expectations. The city and its partners committed $34 million in incentives to bring the festival here, partly on the promise that attendees would spend money in the city.
Nancy Willen, owner of Acme Public Relations, a firm representing films that has worked the festival for years, said she has not found affordable housing near downtown Boulder for herself and her team.
“I could not be more enthusiastic about Boulder for the festival,” Willen said. “But the housing costs right now seem like a hurdle.”
One factor driving high prices is limited supply.
The festival drew 85,000 in-person attendees in Park City in 2025. Boulder’s hotel capacity is roughly 2,900 rooms, according to city officials. And the city’s short-term rental rules have historically required licenses to be tied to a property owner’s primary residence, limiting the number of available rentals.
The Boulder City Council has passed an ordinance allowing property owners and tenants to obtain short-term rental licenses during the festival. So far, the city has issued more than 260 festival licenses with roughly 610 more pending, according to city officials. Property owners can also obtain standard short-term rental licenses to rent during the festival, and the city has received hundreds of new applications since the festival announced its relocation.
However, some are listing their homes under what property managers call a “make me move” philosophy, pricing at whatever it would take to make relocating worth the hassle of cleaning out closets, replacing locks and finding somewhere else to stay.
“In some ways, if it’s your primary home, there’s no downside to not renting,” Ross Bowdey, the director of short-term and mid-term rentals at Fox Property Management, said. “But it’s not really welcoming. It’s not really the heart of what I think an event like Sundance should mean to a community.”
Some property owners are taking a different approach. VelareLX, a Boulder-based company that formed in response to the festival’s relocation, focuses on connecting luxury residences to high-net-worth clientele.
Managing partner Rich Reasons said the company hopes to bring up to 350 homes to the market and was closing its first deal to rent a home during the festival earlier this month. Reasons said VelareLX identified a gap in Boulder’s luxury accommodations market, noting that the city lacks five-star hotels like a Ritz-Carlton.
The company does not list the price of homes, which appear on the Sundance Film Festival’s lodging website. Rather than letting homeowners set prices, Reasons said the company first talks to potential guests about their actual budgets and presents that information to homeowners.
“We want to be able to gather the information and have this budget-first mentality so that we’re responding to reality as opposed to trying to speculate and create a market out of thin air,” he said.
Several current Airbnb listings show rates more than doubling during the festival compared with what the same properties were listed for the week before. One person who works in the film industry said a host raised the price of a downtown condo by nearly 100% after learning they planned to attend the festival. The person declined the condo and is now considering renting an office space and staying outside downtown.
Kate George, founder and CEO of Home Host Concierge, said Boulder is a highly event- and seasonality-driven market, with lodging rates naturally fluctuating throughout the year.
“Sundance Film Festival is entering an already dynamic lodging market, and like any major event, pricing and demand expectations will continue to adjust as more real-world market data becomes available,” she said.
The pricing challenges mean more festival attendees are likely to stay outside Boulder. Data provided by Airbnb suggests some guests are already looking elsewhere. Searches for Denver accommodations during the 2027 festival dates were 10% higher than usual, according to Airbnb. Searches in Louisville, Nederland, Longmont, Lafayette and Erie increased by more than 100%.
Alex Folsom, Airbnb’s Colorado policy manager, said the company supports increasing accommodations for the Sundance Film Festival. “Having more lodging options helps keep prices down while allowing more locals to benefit from this major event in their community,” Folsom said.
Paula DuPré Pesmen, managing director of festival and institute operations at Sundance Institute, said affordability and accessibility were important considerations in selecting Boulder, and that the festival expects lodging inventory and pricing to continue to evolve before the January debut. She acknowledged that some attendees may end up staying in Denver.
“While we expect most attendees to stay in Boulder, we understand that Denver offers a wide range of options, many of them more affordable right now,” Pesmen said in an email. “Denver is a great option as transportation options are being expanded, though it will drive shopping, dining and entertainment dollars outside of Boulder. This year, our Festival footprint is more compact than in the past so there will be a stronger sense of community.”
Property managers and festival organizers are now focused on expanding lodging options and bringing prices down before the festival begins.
Some property managers expect prices to fall as more listings come online and overpriced homes sit unbooked. Several said rates should settle closer to what Boulder sees during CU graduation weekend or football games. Some are also advising clients against speculative pricing, arguing it is better to lock in guests who will return to the same home year after year. Over a decade, they said, property owners could make hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Boulder’s hotels, meanwhile, have committed to making 70% of their room inventory available during the festival at affordable rates, according to Visit Boulder, a destination marketing organization that helped secure the city’s bid. The organization is promoting a “host with heart” approach and has published a guide with suggested prices for property owners.
“At this point, we’re still observing how the lodging and short-term rental market is responding to the Festival,” Charlene Hoffman, CEO at Visit Boulder, said in an email. “That said, affordability and availability are important factors in ensuring attendees feel welcome and are able to stay in the city.”
Jill Grano, a former Boulder City Councilmember and Gov. Jared Polis’s statewide housing manager for the Sundance relocation, has been meeting with real estate companies to warn that speculative prices are unrealistic and could damage the event’s success. She has also been talking with homeowners associations to encourage them to change rules that currently prohibit short-term rentals. She said that unlocking condos and townhomes covered by HOAs would add more affordable inventory to the market.
“We can choose to overprice the housing and people will stay outside of the city and they’ll get a car and they’ll drive in and traffic will swell,” Grano said. “It really would benefit our whole community if we can get this right.”
Howard Cohen, co-founder of Roadside Attractions, has attended the festival for decades as a film buyer. He found Airbnb prices higher than what he saw in Park City and ended up booking a hotel room instead.
“One of the hopes with moving to Boulder, and maybe it was a naive hope, was that because it’s a bigger city, maybe it would be a little more egalitarian,” Cohen said.
People in the film industry said they need to be in the city to catch every screening, attend parties and hold private meetings about buying films. Many are working long days and nights and do not have time to commute. They also want screenings packed with enthusiastic guests, including young people from the industry.
“Being able to stay in Boulder will be a big part of that,” Cohen said. “If they can’t stay in Boulder, do they have as good an experience?”
85k is the total number of tickets sold at all the screenings. There is not 85k people staying in lodging for Sundance.
BRL what is the number of attendees per day? 10k, 20k?
Grano’s comment that “[w]e can choose to overprice the housing . . .” illustrates that it looks like the city is a little naive in the planning for festival accommodations. Even if the “make me move” pricing is somewhat unrealistic, Sundance counting on full-time occupied homes as significant part of the accommodations, in the middle of the winter, when people work and go to school, is going to be a tough sell; residents of Boulder need to live in their homes during the festival. Asking people to choose to put there houses on the market for less so that the festival succeeds; is that going to work?
Asking for ridiculous amounts of money just to exist in Boulder sounds about right.
Totally agree. How many people work in Boulder but can’t afford to live there? Especially those of us in the service industry. Part of that, “we want you to serve us, but not live next to us” mentality.
Hard to feel sorry for those privileged enough to attend Sundance while I’m paying $2700 a month for a two bedroom apartment in Longmont. First world problems I guess.
Totally agree with Sean on this. Unlike Park City, Boulder is an town where 100,000 people live, work, go to school, etc. To move out for a month or a week costs money— to rent in another town, go on vacation, stay with family, etc. Apparently the city’s boosters think locals should eat those costs in order to make Sundance festival staff, rich movie producers, and movie stars comfortable and not feel like they are paying too much.
Well, maybe quite a few residents would leave if they’re able to charge $5k/night! It would fund a very nice vacation and probably a semester to two at CU. I don’t think many residents or property owners with space to rent would feel any responsibility to rein in prices in order to maximize attendance and even more people staying in Boulder. I don’t know why promoters would even hope for that.
The last thing Boulder needs is 80,000 visitors. During the last university graduation, the traffic was bumper to bumper, and with Sundance it will be even more difficult for residents to shop or eat out given the expected crowding.
Sundance Film Festival guidelines for 2027 Home Rental Pricing range from $250 per night for 4 nights for a 1 bedroom, 1 bath apartment, up to $1,386 per night for 11 nights for a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home. The guidelines note that 5–7 bedroom homes may command a premium during peak Festival dates.
As of last week, actual listings on the Festival lodging website range from $50 a night for 10 nights ($513 total incl taxes+fees) at the Econo Lodge in Longmont, up to $3,636 per night for 10 nights ($38,173 total incl taxes+fees) in a 5 bedroom home in Boulder near Arapahoe & 6th. Listings spread from Estes Park to Aurora.
The St Julien one bed rooms (no kitchen) rent for $400 plus in Jan 2027. So folks renting their homes (SFH or condo) should certainly charge more than that to cover their own expenses as well as make a profit.
We STR our Boulder home occasionally and have it up for Sundance. The problem is deciding what to charge and how many night minimum to list it at. Good to see the SFF guidelines, but hard to apply specifically to our home, where size and location of home, plus duration are all factors. Since there is no history, 2027 is a full send guess (looking at AirBnB around us) and see if someone bites.
Would be helpful if Boulder or SFF had a service to help price appropriately if balancing affordability and equity to the homeowner are a main concern.
Um, what?
“But it’s not really welcoming. It’s not really the heart of what I think an event like Sundance should mean to a community.”
So, people should prep and move out of their primary residence and pay to stay elsewhere? And somehow not wanting to do that or only at a price that makes it worth it is unwelcoming? Leave your community to “welcome” others in? I don’t get it and hopefully it does pay off, but it’s hard to imagine it won’t just raise the price of housing more. Probably need more hotels as the price for any visitor to stay in Boulder any time of year is extremely high.
Good Luck….Hopefully the money you get will compensate for the inconvenience of locking up necessary personal belongings and records, along with the risk of getting your house trashed by party people. Also, younneed to inform your insurance company in the event they burn your house down or you might be denied a claim for loses.
It seems the festival may have a positive externality of forcing some Boulderites to learn basic economics of supply and demand.
Looks like a free market standoff at the moment, without the pressure to book driving one side or the other to lay their cards down and begin setting market rate. I’d expect more of this throughout the summer until Labor Day when Sundance is ~100 days away and the need to lock in accommodations or else face reduced choice.
In the meantime, homeowners are testing the upper limits to see what’s available, while the industry voices and associations are working to drive downward pressure.
Park City would have been more a mix of single-family homes and ski/vacation rentals, where Boulder is much more indexed to SFHs. That means families getting displaced for several weeks, packing things up, having to find corresponding housing elsewhere, and unpacking again which is a significant cost that rental investment properties don’t have to manage.
Hearing from a PR agency about the expenses routing them to surrounding Boulder County communities is certainly a valid voice but it’s not representative of the film industry studios that are used to much larger budget than that. Somehow they make Cannes work on an annual basis.
I know how the corporations respond when consumers complain about the rising cost of streaming services… they don’t budge and shareholders applaud them for it. I don’t see why this is any different on the other side of the equation.
Housing seems unusually subject to thinking how things should be instead of how they are. The notion that ten or twenty thousand people would find temp housing in Boulder was imaginary from the start. At least half of Boulder’s homes are rentals. If short-term subleases were allowed (generally not and for good reasons), where are vacating tenants supposed to go? Texas? Many of these rentals are to students who are unable to drop out of CU for a couple of weeks. Approximately 60% of Boulder’s housing is attached, with HOAs for all but each HOA different, and modifying covenants and bylaws to accommodate short-term rentals are subject to HOA vote and passage is questionable. Owner-occupied homes are often owned by people who work, or have kids, neither able to vacate. The vision of Sundance as a “walkable community” has always been a fever dream. And so an avalanche of cars will descend on Boulder, which is very busy making all streets unwelcome on the way to the hopeless hunt for parking. During Sundance those who might have come into Boulder to shop or for a meal will not, and among the 60,000 people who drive here daily to work, many will be calling in sick. Instead of a big net gain in local business income, a gain in the number of people vowing not again to bother with Boulder. Lou Barnes loubarnes222@gmail.com
It would be great to see lower and middle income homeowners and renters actually benefit from this somehow. The lux homes that sit vacant half the year will be a cash cow for those wealthy owners. Yet, Boulder City Council members quake in their boots at the thought of a residential vacancy tax. This city creates it’s own messes then wallows in them.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about the whole thing.
I think Boulder can be a great place for events and I like the idea, but I’m also concerned about how this is going to all go down and if we’ll be prepared. It is also notable how quickly the council can act when they want to do something (see dollar signs).
I live in a owner-occupied home and while I don’t currently rent it out, I am open to doing it. It seems I’m part of the “make me move” mentality group, but I also really value my time and lack of headaches. I could sure use the money, but it also seems like a lot of effort and logistics before and after the event. It sounds like a real pain and I can’t imagine my house would fetch enough to make this worthwhile.
$5000 a night! It seems some people have Sundance mixed up with Telluride. Both film festivals, but not the same demographics or price points.
I’ve been concerned about this issue. I’d like to offer up a guest suite to a struggling artist – is there a group coordinating something like this?
About accommodation costs during Sundance and an expectation of reasonable housing costs… really? This ranks with FIFA’s statements washing hands on ticket pricing.
I think price gouging in Boulder is out of control. My husband and I wanted to a concert in Boulder and not have to drive an hour afterwards, all the airbnb listings went up to like $1,000-$3,000 a night for the show. We decided to see where else the band was playing, and went to Philadelphia instead! We spent way less there for plane tickets and lodging and stayed in an awesome place where we could walk to the venue and relax. Taking complete advantage of people is completely out of hand in Boulder. There is a difference between making a good living and just completely raking people.
What the folks who make the government decisions thought We the People would be just fine with the restaurants and other commerical entities would be just fine in making a killin—-while we sat quietly by in 4 block long traffic fams and ghost parking places—while renting our middle class abodes out for $225 a night? And the hotels make $1000/night? Same logic that’ was used for the airport debates—give the business community what it wants–who cares about a 30 or forty thousand old hippies. The profits from Sundance are going to end up in NYC, Texas and LA.. We the People? We’ll be seeing tax increases to pay for the resulting problems in our streets and other City services.
This conversation is very interesting. There is a lot to consider. Here’s one more thing to factor in. The weather: January is Boulders coldest month. Highs in the low to mid 40s. Lows in the low 20s. Snow is always a possibility. How will this impact this “walkable” event?
I have a serious issue that the STR license changes ONLY apply to Sundance. Why not CU graduation, football games, concerts at Folsom, Boulder International Film Festival, Conference on World Affairs, the Bolder Boulder, Peaks Triathlon, etc?
What about all vacant commercial space (30% vacancy rate)? Why not transform some of it into lodging or housing? The former Alfalfa’s location on Broadway and Arapahoe has been vacant for 5 years. The original Lazy Dog location near Iris and 30th has been vacant since 2004 – 22 years! Tebo Properties owns this dilapidated, fire hazard. The state of this property would never be tolerated in a neighborhood or other business district. It has devolved into a homeless encampment and dumping ground for falling tree limbs. I suspect it is violating certain city codes.
The Lazy Dog location on Pearl was vacant for 6 years and is now occupied by a Rally House sports t-shirt shop. Why does Tebo and many other commercial owners keep properties vacant?
The city is losing its vibrancy and local, creative business vibe. I recommend reading Jill Grano’s research article about how Boulder has moved from a generative community to more of an extractive community: https://open.substack.com/pub/jilladlergrano/p/who-is-boulder-for?r=1ocw5d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
A walkable, community experience in the middle of February in a hollow downtown with $500+ rooms a night is not welcoming to anyone. Shaking my head how this got so “Sideways”.