Boulder bet $34 million to land Sundance. High lodging prices are raising concerns.

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?”

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This story was originally published by Boulder Reporting Lab and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.