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Boulder braces for Sundance Film Festival as passes go on sale and homeowners rush to host
PrevNextDenver7’s Ethan Carlson
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BOULDER, Colo. — Passes and ticket packages for the Sundance Film Festival’s new home in Boulder went on sale Thursday, as anticipation only continues growing with fewer than 100 days until the event begins.
The festival runs Jan. 21-31, 2027. Officials with the City of Boulder say it has 1,848 short-term and festival lodging rental licenses issued or pending.
Of those, 1,525 homes are approved to advertise. That surpasses the city’s goal of 1,500 licenses. Airbnb says searches for Boulder stays during the festival are up 500% from last year.
Richard Schuh, who has lived in Boulder for 20 years, said the market is crowded. He and his wife, Kelly, have hosted more than 2,000 reservations from a guest suite in their basement. He said Boulder already had nearly 3,000 short-term rental hosts before the festival.
Schuh said he sees many people hoping to cash in.
“I think the biggest thing is there’s a lot of opportunism right now,” Schuh said.
He said some people think a little space could bring in a large payday.
“People thinking that they’re just going to put, you know, a spare bed in their garage and get 10 grand for it, and that’s just not the case,” Schuh said.
Schuh said hosts who already held a short-term rental license were automatically added as festival license holders, with the number of festival permits approaching 2,000.
“Now you’re throwing 2,000 festival holders on top of that, and it’s my understanding they’re getting 40 to 50 new applications a week, so it’s going to be a very, very competitive environment,” Schuh said.
The city created a Festival Lodging Rental License that lets homeowners and tenants rent their homes for up to 29 days a year during a major festival. Charlene Hoffman, CEO of Visit Boulder, said the city has passed several ordinances to open its 47,000 housing units to festival rentals. She said the 1,525 homes approved to advertise are fully licensed and available now, while others are still being approved, which can come down to a missing piece of an application or an unpaid fee.
Hoffman said lodging is Boulder’s biggest challenge because some attendees will stay up to 11 days.
“I think our biggest challenge is really to accommodate, from a lodging standpoint, people staying for up to 11 days, and so we’ve been working pretty hard on our short-term rental licenses and making sure people know how to host, and that’s been a real focus of ours most of this year,” Hoffman said.
Visit Boulder recommends hosts charge $250 to $300 a night for a one-bedroom condo and $1,100 to $1,400 for a four-bedroom house. The guidance is based on two years of booking data from Park City, Utah, and January benchmarks from Airbnb and Vrbo, according to a Visit Boulder fact sheet.
Hotels still have rooms, Hoffman said, though timing matters.
“Our Boulder hotels are not sold out, and the first weekend of the festival is pretty tight,” Hoffman said.
She said options open up quite a bit during the second week and weekend. She said anyone who doesn’t see rooms online should call hotels directly. The fact sheet says rooms held for group reservations can affect what shows up online.
Hoffman said the festival in Utah has averaged 86,000 to 90,000 people over its 11 days, and Boulder is planning for that number and potentially more. The fact sheet says the festival will have 23 screens in Boulder, up from 16 last year, and that all 14 venues sit within about two miles of one another.
Ticket options include a new Encore Ticket Package, which includes 10 tickets to encore screenings of films that have already premiered at the festival. A new Matinee Ticket Package covers up to 10 in-person screenings that start before 5 p.m. An Online Festival Pass offers on-demand access to the full online program from Jan. 28 through Jan. 31, and an Online Festival Short Films Pass covers the festival’s short films. The fact sheet says tickets for attendees ages 18 to 25 and for enrolled students start at $15.
Schuh said he plans to keep part of the festival for himself. He said he hopes to find a young filmmaker or a breakout performer who needs a place to stay once the dust settles.
“We would love to find a last-second accommodation, and we’ll probably give it up for free,” Schuh said.
“We’re not looking to capitalize on that,” he said.
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