The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Typical host pulling in about $8,700
By Mark Reaman
Crested Butte-area homeowners who short-term-rented some or all of their homes last ski season through Airbnb earned about $1 million. The online short-term rental booking company released statistics this week for several Colorado mountain towns, including Crested Butte. The Airbnb stats indicated “income earned by hosts compared to the last ski season grew by 142 percent in Crested Butte.”
Based on the “Airbnb Ski Season report for Colorado” approximately 121,000 Airbnb guests used the service last ski season in the state in places like Crested Butte, Breckenridge, Vail and Telluride—a 90 percent increase over the previous year. The guests brought in a total of about $32 million to the state.
Airbnb press secretary Jasmine Mora provided the Crested Butte News with localized numbers that show there were more than 220 listings booked on Airbnb during the ski season in the upper valley north of Crested Butte South.
The statistics compiled by Airbnb indicate the annual earning for a typical host was $8,700. The average host’s age in the Crested Butte area is 43, and 61 percent of them are female. Local homeowners earned $991,000 in income through Airbnb.
Approximately 5,100 inbound guests came in for the Crested Butte ski season and the average price a guest paid was $70, or about $250 per listing. The guests spent an average of 3.2 days in the home; 41 percent of the guest nights were on weekdays.
While Airbnb guests came from all over the world, the vast majority was from the United States. The top cities of origination were Denver at 25 percent, Boulder at 10 percent, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins at 3 percent, and Dallas at 2 percent of Airbnb guests to the valley.
The stats show that there are 2,800 active hosts in Colorado ski country and average earnings range from $7,200 in Avon to $16,000 in Telluride.
The data for booking was compiled between November 15, 2016 and April 15, 2017 and includes only Airbnb and not any other short-term rental companies such as VRBO.
In the town of Crested Butte, lodging tax collections have increased substantially since 2010. According to town figures, in 2010 $153,588 in lodging tax was collected by Crested Butte. Of that, 47 percent came from short-term rentals like Airbnb. In 2016, $380,969 in lodging taxes were collected and of that, 65 percent, or $247,264, came from STRs.
