Boulder’s new Airbnb rules sparked a gold rush ahead of the Sundance Film Festival

Ross Bowdey was trying to be reasonable. Residents of his hometown of Boulder had been dreaming big for months: The Sundance Film Festival was slated to make its Colorado debut there in January, and many homeowners figured they could make a killing by renting their places to the regular crowd of celebrities and cinephiles. But Bowdey, a longtime property manager, cringed at the lofty dollar figures being floated — in some cases, nearly $10,000 a night for homes that had no business asking that much.

He recently met with owners who were interested in renting out their three-bedroom condo in downtown Boulder during the festival. What the home lacked in size it made up for in location, right off the town’s main strip. Bowdey thought he could get them about $2,500 a night.

“Their response to me was, ‘You’re not even close,'” Bowdey tells me.

Sundance’s decision to ditch its longtime home of Park City, Utah, in favor of Boulder marked a coup for the city — and a conundrum. Among the biggest questions: Where to put everybody? The city sees brief swells of visitors for University of Colorado-related celebrations such as family weekend or graduation day, but it has never hosted an event on the scale of Sundance, which tends to draw about 100,000 people over 11 days. The hotel squeeze was exacerbated by a long-standing ban on investor-owned Airbnbs, leaving Boulder well short of the rentals needed to accommodate the festival.

Boulder officials’ response has been to open the floodgates, inviting practically anyone to apply for a special license to list their home as a short-term rental during Sundance. Investors, longtime Boulderites, part-time residents, even renters — all are welcome to help shore up the city’s stock of Airbnbs and Vrbos. The city has approved more than 1,300 short-term rentals since opening up the process and receives about 40 more applications each week. Businesses are popping up to connect luxury homeowners with studios, sponsors, and A-listers in need of places to stay, while some residents are orchestrating renovations to lure premium-paying guests.

Not everyone is pleased. Some festival-goers are balking at the high nightly rates and biding their time until owners slash prices. First-time hosts are realizing their hauls may be smaller than originally hoped. Even the city’s tourism organization is asking rate-happy hosts to exercise restraint.

“I think people need to get over that idea that they’re going to just make their retirement on the first year of Sundance coming to Boulder,” says Juli Kovats, a longtime real estate agent there. “It’s not gonna happen.”

The Sundance festival was once synonymous with Park City. For more than 40 years, film buffs and movie stars descended upon the snowy resort town each January in their best approximations of alpine chic. Two years ago, though, the Sundance Institute invited other cities to bid for the hosting gig as the Park City contract neared its 2026 expiration date. Boulder officials were eager to throw their hat in the ring: The local arts scene, nearby mountains, and small-town feel seemed like a natural landing spot for the storied festival. Boulder boosters touted the city’s connection to nearby communities, including Denver, and sweetened the deal with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of incentives.

By the time Sundance and Boulder sealed the deal in the spring of 2025, city officials and leaders at Visit Boulder, the local tourism organization, had already spent months gaming out the lodging situation. They could count on nearly 3,000 hotel rooms but fewer than 700 short-term rentals, thanks to a decade-old city ordinance. In Boulder, you had to actually live in a house if you wanted to rent it out for anything short of 30 days — investors or absentee owners were barred from operating the types of full-time Airbnbs or Vrbos that had proliferated in other markets. Sure, Sundance attendees could retreat each evening to the ample housing options in nearby Denver or its other suburbs, but event organizers wanted as many people as possible to stay near the festivities. They estimated the city would need about 1,500 new short-term rentals to fill the gap.

The city’s solution was to spin up an exception to Boulder’s strict rental rules. In October 2025, the City Council approved a special kind of short-term rental permit, known as a Festival Lodging Rental License, that will allow any owner or tenant to rent out their home from January 11 to February 9, 2027, providing a 10-day cushion on either side of the Sundance dates. Once-banned Airbnbs would be welcomed with open arms.

Since then, the potential paydays have captivated Boulder locals. “The hype around it has been crazy,” says Zori Levine, a local real estate agent. January is typically Boulder’s quietest tourism month, since the place isn’t a ski destination like Aspen, Breckenridge, or Park City. Airbnb has already seen a 1,000% year-over-year increase in searches for Boulder rentals during the festival dates, and nearby areas will also get a boost. Denver searches are up nearly 40%, the company says.

People need to get over that idea that they’re going to just make their retirement on the first year of Sundance coming to Boulder.Juli Kovats, Boulder real estate agent

Kovats, another local real estate agent, hosted a happy hour this summer for the landlord-curious, inviting Bowdey and other real estate insiders to share tips on managing short-term rentals. Usually she’ll get about a dozen people at her events, she tells me. This time, nearly 60 people showed up.

“I think everybody kind of wants a piece of the pie,” Kovats says.

Airbnb, in an effort to gin up more intrigue, has offered $200 to first-time hosts during the festival. That amount pales in comparison to some of the nightly rates trotted out by new license holders testing the waters. Charlene Hoffman, the chief executive of Visit Boulder, tells me she’s seen listings ranging from $50,000 to $70,000 for the duration of the festival, which she broadly characterizes as “unrealistic.” A quick search on Airbnb confirms there are plenty of high-dollar options: a five-bedroom with “breathtaking Rocky Mountain views” can be yours the length of the fest for a whopping $42,380; a four-bedroom near the popular Pearl Street Mall for $42,340; or a six-bedroom with a private, second-floor hot tub for $60,540.

“I mean, if it’s a six- or seven-bedroom house that has a screening room and a hot tub and a full kitchen and whatever, some of those may demand a higher price,” Hoffman tells me. “I just don’t think there’s many people that will rent them.”

The majority of Sundance attendees last year — roughly two-thirds — hailed from the state of Utah, an analysis by Y² Analytics found. Generally speaking, these aren’t the high rollers who can stomach a five-figure lodging bill. Hoffman tells me she expects next year’s festival to draw a similar crowd of Colorado locals, and she’s working to ensure they’ll find places in the city that fit their budgets. Visit Boulder’s “Host with Heart” initiative included educational sessions with Airbnb reps and homeowners, along with suggested pricing: $250 to $300 per night for a one-bedroom condo and $1,100 to $1,400 per night for a four-bedroom house.

An Airbnb spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company is “committed to supporting Boulder in increasing available accommodations.” While pricing is left up to individual hosts, the spokesperson said, “we always encourage fair and transparent pricing practices.”

Some Boulder residents are trying the more modest tack, aiming for hospitality rather than top dollar. Kovats plans to rent out her home’s small basement apartment but hasn’t yet settled on pricing. She guesses she’ll fall somewhere in Visit Boulder’s suggested range, maybe $1,000 for five nights: not “outrageous,” she tells me, since she considers anyone willing to travel for a film festival “my kind of people.”

“The market is all over the place from a pricing standpoint,” Bowdey tells me.

The first year in Boulder was always going to be a learning process, says Paula DuPré Pesmen, a longtime film producer, Boulder resident, and Sundance’s managing director of festival and institute operations. She, too, has been working to temper expectations around rental pricing and the typical clientele. “I’ve often said, George Clooney is probably not going to be booking your home,” she tells me. “Most of the people coming are going to be independent artists and their communities.”

George Clooney is probably not going to be booking your home.Paula DuPré Pesmen, Sundance’s managing director of festival and institute operations

While plenty of pie-in-the-sky prices can be found on Airbnb and Vrbo, the true moonshots may never even reach public platforms. VelareLX, founded in 2025, is working with more than 100 property owners looking to rent out their places for Sundance and other marquee Boulder events. The firm connects hosts and guests based on their requirements, with many of its clients coming from the film industry, says Pete Dawson, VelareLX’s managing director. Some are waiting to book until they find out whether their films have made the festival’s cut. (The full programming slate will be unveiled in the first half of December).

Cris Jones, the Boulder official in charge of coordinating Sundance logistics, acknowledges that some owners are asking for “significantly higher prices than what the Sundance folks were used to.” But he’s been encouraged to see prices trend downward as more places come up for grabs, and he considers the new license a resounding success, given that it’s on track to deliver enough new rentals to surpass the city’s goal. The city has received 1,421 applications for the Festival Lodging Rental License and nearly 600 applications for its traditional short-term rental license since December 2025.

The bigger challenge on the lodging front, Jones tells me, has been “matching expectations to reality.”

Boulderites may lack a local precedent for this kind of influx, but similarly short-lived frenzies happen all the time. Hundreds of thousands descend upon Austin for South By Southwest each spring. Some Augusta, Georgia, homeowners collect a year’s worth of mortgage payments during the polo-clad Masters pilgrimage. When the World Cup brought soccer’s marquee event to nearly a dozen US cities this summer, new short-term rental hosts rushed to turn game day into payday.

Yet year one of Sundance in Boulder marks a unique experiment — for the festival and its new host city, sure, but also for the rental rules that have clamped down on Airbnbs and the like around the country. Some places, like Boulder, have taken a restrictive stance toward short-term rentals, limiting licenses to actual residents or outlawing them in certain zones. Others have adopted a looser approach, leaving the number of rentals up to the laws of supply and demand. Many fall somewhere in the messy middle. In the span of a few weeks this winter, Boulder will speed-run both ends of the spectrum.

Hoffman says her contacts at Airbnb have reassured her that the aspirational prices will come down as the festival dates near, just as they tend to when a big event like the World Cup or Super Bowl touches down in a new city. “Everybody tests the market in the beginning, and they always shoot very high,” Hoffman tells me. Good news for festival-goers — maybe not so much for the hosts dreaming of their five-figure checks.

Then again, Sundance has agreed to call Boulder home for at least the next decade. In Park City, many regular attendees returned to the same accommodations each year. Hosts in Colorado may be wise to play the long game.

“If you price too high,” Bowdey tells me, “it doesn’t start off on the right foot.”