Heads in beds counted

How many visitors can stay in an Estes Park lodging facility of some variety on any given night? That question has plagued local tourism leaders for decades.

During a meeting last week, the Visit Estes Park board of directors finally received a definitive answer: 34,675 in 6,815 units.

That was the tally determined by Inntopia, a company specializing in analytics and platform solutions for lodging and tourism businesses. The company’s study of the area included the area inside the Estes Park town limits and as well as those areas in Larimer County, but still within the boundaries of the Local Marketing District.

Inntopia’s work provided a breakout of by variety of lodging from professionally managed hotels and motels to bed-and-breakfast accommodations; location of the lodging; and type of lodging from economy to luxury. The professionally managed properties element of the study included almost 85% of all rent-by-owner units because they are professionally managed. A second element of the study included a study of rented properties managed only by owners.

Overall, there are 1,890 hotel-motel units in the LMD that account for 8,336 pillows. Cabin-cottage-chalet properties have 8,109 pillows in 1,508 units. Private homes account for 5,633 pillows but only 759 units while there are 903 campground sites accounting for 5,560 pillows.

With 742 units, the condominium category has slightly fewer units than private homes but substantially fewer pillows—4,057. The lodge-inn category showed 386 units and 1,253 pillows; 32 B&Bs accounted for 32 units and 68 pillows. Hostels accounted for 16 units and 16 pillows.

At 1,929 units, the Spur 66 corridor (Tunnel Road) has the most units available to rent, with 31% of all unit inventory, followed by the downtown area at 1,049 units. The U.S. 34 (Big Thompson Avenue) corridor has 843 units. According to the study, “With 11,401 pillows, the Spur 66 corridor has the highest potential capacity, with 35% of all pillows and can accommodate roughly 220% more guests than the next area, downtown.”

Not only does the Spur 66 corridor have the most units available to rent, but it also has the highest percentage—65%—of economy units of all areas. Most of the area’s units—85% are classified as economy or moderate, and account for 5,059 of the inventory. Only 1,177 are classified as deluxe or luxury lodging units.

The study found that only 27% of single-family homes accounted for rent-by-owner short term rentals (STR). Nearly 37% of the STRs are multi-family units such as apartments or condominiums. About a quarter of the rent-by-owner units are cabins-cottages. In all, only about 4% of the owner-managed STR market accounted for the total inventory of 6,815 units available in the LMD.