The figure sounds ominous that Breckenridge summer bookings are down 17%. Is the sky falling in Breckenridge with visitation? At the same time bookings dropped nightly rates actually increased. How is this possible? Are the new nightly rental regulations to blame for the cliff drop? Should we even care about nights booked or is there a better metric?
What was in the data on nights booked in Breckenridge?
Breckenridge was down around 11.7% in guest nights for summer lodging compared to last year, according to the local tourism office, but there is one data platform that shows guest nights were down 17.7%.
Breckenridge Tourism Office Director of Operations Bill Wishowski provided updates to Breckenridge Town Council on Tuesday, Nov. 11, and explained the disparities between the two data sets.
He said data platform KeyData, the one whose information demonstrates the town was down 11.7%, showed there were around 138,000 guest nights booked in Breckenridge this summer. The other data platform that demonstrated the town was down around 17.7%, DestiMetrics, showed the town had around 105,000 guest nights booked.
Nightly rental rates rose in Breckenridge
Even though the number of nights booked in Breckenridge plummeted, KeyData’s stats demonstrated the average daily rate to stay in Breckenridge came out to around $238, which is up $3 from last year according to KeyData’s data set. DestiMetrics stats show the average daily rate was $213, which is up $4 from last year according to DestiMetrics’ data set.
Breckenridge Revenue barely impacted
Although the number of nights rented plummeted 17%, when I looked at the change in revenue it was barely changed at around 4%. This means there is not a direct correlation between nights rented and revenue.
Breckenridge tax revenue versus nights rented
There is a theory that all nights rented are profitable, is this theory true in Breckenridge?
From the information above that rates are increasing/staying constant and that revenue is not declining by much from the loss in nights rented, it makes me question the value of the nights that were no longer rented. In other words, were the rentals that led to the 17% decline hugely beneficial to Breckenridge.
As nightly rental rates stay high and revenue declines very little, it shows that the lost rentals were not huge contributors to revenue for the city of Breckenridge. So in essence the nights lost look like the sky is falling but by other metrics like Revenue, the summer was not off by very much.
We can think of this like an airline. You can focus on utilization and fill every single plane to the brim, but is this profitable? Look at Southwest airlines, their model is to drive the highest utilization to bring the most profit. On the flip side take Delta or United that are focusing on the premium cabin. Delta and United are immensely more profitable than Southwest even though they have lower utilization as they are selling more premium tickets which drives more revenue.
What is in the data on who is no longer renting in Breckenridge?
Wishowski also presented summer visitation stats at a Nov. 5 winter preview hosted by the Breckenridge Tourism Office, where he shared some notable trends in overnight visitor demographics.
“A significant, significant portion of those nights that were down were from Colorado (overnight visitors),” Wishowski said. “Some markets fared a little better than others when we talked about out-of-state (overnight visitors), but most of the deficit was Colorado.”
Lost Breckenridge visitors not that profitable
As highlighted above, not all nightly rentals have the same profit, just like in the airline model, some customers are much more profitable than others. We are seeing this play out in Breckenridge as the overwhelming majority of the overnight visitation pullback is from Colorado visitors. As we can see from the revenue numbers this pullback in visitation is not having much of an impact on the bottom line.
Are nightly rental regulations the cause of the drop in nightly rentals?
No, the reason for the drop in nightly rental is economic. Limiting the number of nightly rentals actually was a blessing for the industry as it focused rentals on the profitable customers. If there would have been an abundance of rentals, nightly rates would have dropped even further with likely not much change in revenue but huge impacts from increased visitation.
Headline number of nights rented not the best metric
Just like in the airline industry, utilization is not the best metric. In this case nights booked is not an indication of the health of Breckenridge tourism as some tourist are much more valuable than others. A better metric is sales tax revenue as it is shows how profitable the visitation is for the town of Breckenridge on tourism. In this case the drop during the summer was only around 4% which is what I would expect with the general uncertainty in the economy.
Breckenridge nightly rental model is actually working
Whether this was the intent of the nightly rental regulations or not, by restricting some nightly rentals Breckenridge has kept nightly rates higher while limiting the amount of tourism that was only marginally profitable or possibly unprofitable. Remember just like in a business not all revenue is the same
Additional Reading/Resources:
- https://www.summitdaily.com/news/breckenridge-summer-tourism-2025-down-compared-2024/
- https://coloradohardmoney.com/top-10-mountain-towns-in-total-free-fall/
- https://coloradohardmoney.com/big-questions-in-co-this-election-what-town-proposed-17-short-term-rental-tax/
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Glen Weinberg personally writes these weekly real estate blogs based on his real estate experience as a lender and property owner. He is the owner of Fairview Commercial Lending. Glen has been published as an expert in hard money lending, real estate valuation, financing, and various other real estate topics in Bloomberg, Businessweek ,the Colorado Real Estate Journal, National Association of Realtors Magazine, The Real Deal real estate news, the CO Biz Magazine, The Denver Post, The Scotsman mortgage broker guide, Mortgage Professional America and various other national publications.
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