Expert short-term rental marketing to grow your bookings and nightly rate in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.
* Market averages. Cavmir-managed properties typically exceed these figures by 25–45%. Data sourced from AirDNA, STR market reports, and Cavmir internal analytics.
Colorado Springs sits where the Great Plains hit the Rockies, and the collision is the product: Garden of the Gods' red sandstone fins against Pikes Peak, the 14,115-foot mountain that inspired 'America the Beautiful.' This is a value market with a demand base most cities would envy — five military installations, the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee headquarters, the Air Force Academy, and a summer tourism season that fills the westside every year. The short-term-rental rules split the market in two: owner-occupied permits work broadly across the city, while non-owner-occupied rentals are shut out of the single-family residential zones entirely and must keep 500 feet apart everywhere else. Entry prices remain reasonable by Colorado standards, occupancy is steadier than the mountain towns, and the listing that bothers with real photography of the rocks and the peak separates from the pack fast.
Colorado Springs demand runs deeper than tourism. Summer — June through August — is the leisure peak, when Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo fill the calendar with families. Around that sits the institutional layer: Air Force Academy graduation week in late May books everything within miles, military PCS moves and visiting families generate year-round midweek stays near Fort Carson and Peterson, and the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb — run since 1916 — brings motorsport money every June. Blended nightly rates run around $185 with occupancy in the low 60s, modest numbers that hide a favorable ratio: purchase prices here are low enough that a well-bought, well-marketed westside bungalow clears returns the resort towns can't match. September and the balloon-filled Labor Day weekend carry the shoulder, and winter stays softer but never empty — this is a drive market ninety minutes from Denver with its own airport fifteen minutes from downtown.
Nearby Markets: Denver | Breckenridge | Santa Fe
A few of the visual fingerprints we lean into when we shoot, brand and market a Colorado Springs property — courtesy of the open Wikimedia Commons archive.
Cavmir wins in Colorado Springs because most of the market is under-presented. The average listing here is a nice house photographed like a tax record — no Garden of the Gods light, no Pikes Peak framing, no story. We shoot the red rock and the front-range light properly, write copy that names Old Colorado City and the Broadmoor corridor instead of adjectives, and build direct-booking websites for hosts, B&Bs and small inns so graduation week and Hill Climb guests turn into a repeat list you own. If you hold an owner-occupied permit, we make your calendar earn its keep; if you operate a non-owner-occupied unit in a legal zone, we make its scarcity visible. We help position and market your property. We never manage it or touch your keys.
Colorado Springs was planned as a resort before it was anything else. General William Jackson Palmer, the railroad man who founded it in 1871, laid out a genteel health-and-tourism town at the foot of Pikes Peak — so genteel, and so full of English visitors, that it earned the nickname 'Little London.' Tuberculosis patients came for the dry air, Cripple Creek gold money built the mansions, and in 1893 a Wellesley professor named Katharine Lee Bates rode to the summit of Pikes Peak and came down with the lines that became 'America the Beautiful.' Spencer Penrose opened the Broadmoor in 1918 and built the road up the peak; the Garden of the Gods had already been deeded to the city in 1909 as a free public park, forever.
The twentieth century layered on the institutions that now anchor the rental market: Fort Carson and Peterson during and after World War II, NORAD inside Cheyenne Mountain, the Air Force Academy graduating classes since 1959, and the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters arriving in 1978 — the roots of today's official 'Olympic City USA' identity and the striking U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum that opened downtown in 2020. The short-term-rental rules arrived in 2019 and tightened in 2020: every unit needs an annual permit, owner-occupied rentals (your primary residence) work broadly, and non-owner-occupied rentals are excluded from the single-family residential zones and spaced 500 feet apart everywhere else. In 2025 the city began auditing primary-residence claims and closed the door on new permits for homes with accessory dwelling units — a regime that rewards the owners who run it straight.
The money is on the westside. Old Colorado City and the blocks near Garden of the Gods pull the strongest nightly rates — walkable, historic and photogenic, with the red rocks minutes away. Downtown earns on museums, restaurants and the Olympic campus; the Broadmoor and North Cheyenne Cañon corridor sells quiet prestige near Seven Falls and the zoo; and the newer east-side neighborhoods run cheaper with steady military and family demand. Manitou Springs, the historic spa town at the foot of the Peak, is a separate city with its own — far more restrictive — short-term-rental rules; don't assume anything transfers. Blended nightly rates land around $185 with occupancy in the low 60s, and the entry math is the story: a well-bought westside bungalow can clear cash-on-cash returns the mountain resorts can't touch.
Summer is the peak — June through August, when the national-park-style attractions run at full flood and families fill the westside. Late May belongs to Air Force Academy graduation, September to conferences, cool hiking weather and the Labor Day balloon launches, and October to gold aspens in the canyons. Winter is the soft season but never a dead one: military travel, holiday visits and Broadmoor-corridor getaways keep midweek alive, and the well-marketed listing with a fireplace photo works the season the phone-snap listing writes off.
Colorado Springs runs a clear, two-lane permit system — moderate by Colorado standards, but with rules that decide what you can buy. Every short-term rental (under 30 days) needs an annual city permit (about $125), renewed yearly. Lane one: owner-occupied units — your primary residence, occupied at least 185 days a year — which are permitted across most of the city. Lane two: non-owner-occupied units, which are prohibited in the single-family residential zones (R-E, R-1 6, R-1 9 and equivalent single-family districts) and must sit at least 500 feet from the nearest other non-owner-occupied STR everywhere else. Applications run through the city's online portal with an owner affidavit, proof of $500,000 liability insurance, and proof of listing.
The city enforces the distinction: a primary-residency audit program launched in February 2025 and has revoked permits where owner-occupancy claims didn't hold up, and since mid-2025 properties with an accessory dwelling unit can't take new STR permits. The practical read: the owner-occupied lane is generous and stable — rent your home while you travel, run a permitted ADU-era legacy unit, host rooms — while the non-owner-occupied lane is a zoning-and-spacing puzzle you solve before you buy, not after. Manitou Springs next door is a separate jurisdiction with far tighter rules. Confirm zoning, spacing and the current fee schedule with the city before you commit to a property.
The Colorado Springs strategic tip: pick your lane before you pick your house. The owner-occupied and non-owner-occupied permits are two different businesses — one is a flexible way to monetize your own home around travel and graduation-week gold rushes; the other is a zoning-constrained investment that lives or dies on the parcel you choose. Owners who buy first and check the map second are the ones who end up on the audit list.
Tactically: first, shoot the geology. Guests are buying proximity to Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak — lead with the red rocks at sunrise and the peak from your street, not the sofa. Second, build a direct channel around the repeat calendar: Academy families return for four years of parents' weekends and one graduation; a direct-booking site and a simple email list turn one stay into six. Third, price the published dates — graduation, the Hill Climb, Labor Day Lift Off — months ahead; the demand is a certainty and most of the market sleeps on it. Fourth, write for the military and relocation guest as well as the tourist: PCS families booking a month while they house-hunt are steady, low-wear business the leisure-only listing never sees. Fifth, keep the insurance certificate and permit current and visible — in an audited market, clean paperwork is a competitive feature.
The constraints: non-owner-occupied permits are locked out of the single-family zones that hold most of the housing stock, the 500-foot spacing rule can kill a deal late, and the 2025 audit program shows the city checks claims. Hail is a serious, recurring property cost — this is one of the hailiest metros in America — wildfire underwriting questions are real on the west edge, and winter demand needs actual marketing to fill.
The ordinance makes $500,000 in liability coverage a permit requirement, so a proper short-term-rental or landlord policy is the floor, not the ceiling. Colorado Springs adds two regional exposures worth pricing honestly: hail — roof and window claims here are among the most frequent in the country — and wildfire underwriting on the wooded west side, where some carriers have tightened. If the property has a hot tub or sits near open space, say so in the application. A broker who writes the Front Range specifically will save you from the generic-policy gaps.
Stays under 30 days owe the combined state, county, PPRTA and city sales taxes — roughly 8.2% all-in — plus the city's 2% Lodgers and Automobile Rental Tax (LART), for a guest-facing total around 10%: one of the lowest lodging-tax stacks of any major U.S. city. Note that tourism interests are working toward a ballot measure to raise LART, so confirm the current rate when you register. Platforms collect some components; you remain responsible for the rest and for direct bookings, plus property tax and income tax on earnings. Confirm your exact stack with the city and your accountant.
Entry prices here still allow conventional investment loans that pencil, and the owner-occupied lane opens a genuine house-hack path: buy as a primary residence, permit it, and rent it around your own calendar. Non-owner-occupied buyers should treat the zoning and 500-foot spacing check as a financing contingency — a permit that can't issue kills the income the loan was underwritten on. DSCR lenders are active in this market and like its steady occupancy; documented rental history and a clean permit strengthen every file.
Colorado Springs keeps compounding: one of the fastest-growing large metros in the country, a downtown remade around the Olympic museum and stadium district, and a visitor base — military, Olympic, outdoor — that doesn't depend on any single season. The permit system has been stable since 2020 and enforcement is maturing rather than expanding, which favors incumbents who run clean. Watch the LART ballot question and any zoning-code revisions, but the durable play is unglamorous and reliable: buy in the right zone, permit it properly, shoot the rocks and the peak like they deserve, and build the direct-booking list that turns graduation weekends and summer families into a business the platforms don't own.
Colorado Springs is the most photogenic value market in the Mountain West, and almost nobody treats it that way. The raw material is absurd: 300-foot red sandstone fins with a fourteener behind them, a park that's legally free forever, a downtown with an Olympic museum, and neighborhoods of brick bungalows that photograph like a Wes Anderson western. Yet the average listing leads with a gray living room. That gap — between what the place looks like and how it's presented — is exactly where we work, and here the gap is a canyon. Shoot the rocks at sunrise, frame the peak from the porch, and a $185-a-night bungalow starts winning like a boutique product.
We also love the demand mix, because it's built like a diversified portfolio. Summer tourists, yes — but also Academy graduation weeks that sell out years of family loyalty, military moves that book quiet months, motorsport crowds every June since 1916, and Olympic hopefuls' families in for training blocks. That calendar rewards operators who market deliberately instead of waiting for July, and it forgives the seasons that pure resort towns dread. Add entry prices that still let a first-time host build a real business, and Colorado Springs becomes the market we recommend to owners who want returns with their scenery. The peak's been marketing itself since a professor wrote a hymn about the view; the listings just need to catch up.
A great property in Colorado Springs doesn't just want a listing — it wants a point of view, an audience, and a brand the city itself would recognise.
A few honest, insider picks for Colorado Springs — the kind of specifics that make a listing read like a local wrote it, because one did. Real places, no filler.
The park opens early, costs nothing — the 1909 deed requires it — and at dawn the red fins glow like they're lit from inside while the crowds are still asleep. Send guests to the Perkins Central Garden trail first; it's paved, easy and delivers the postcard in the first hundred yards.
Late light turns the rocks crimson with Pikes Peak going purple behind them — the single frame that explains the city. It's a pull-off, not a hike, which means every guest gets the shot. This is the image your listing should open with.
The 1859 territorial-era district — briefly Colorado's capital — is now galleries, coffee and patios along Colorado Avenue. Walkable, historic and ten minutes from the Garden; 'three blocks from Old Colorado City' is a booking argument, so make it.
An underground den beneath Tejon Street — moody lighting, inventive plates, and the kind of interior guests photograph before the food lands. It's the anti-chain answer to a city visitors underestimate, and the reservation to suggest for the trip's one dressed-up night.
A former cable-car bed turned staircase: roughly 2,700 steps gaining 2,000 feet in under a mile. Locals treat it as a rite, a workout and a bragging right. Guests will ask; point them to the reservation system and the early slots, and warn them the altitude is not a rumor.
Late September through mid-October, the canyon roads west of the Broadmoor turn gold and the summer crowds vanish. Crisp days, empty trails, soft lodging rates — sell it to couples and photographers as the smartest week on the calendar.
The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway climbs to the 14,115-foot summit where 'America the Beautiful' was born — the highest railway in North America, rebuilt and reopened in 2021. Tell guests to book ahead and bring layers; it's winter up top in July.
Three honest answers earn the five-star review: drink water and take day one easy at 6,000-plus feet; summer afternoons can hail, so plan mornings outdoors; and COS airport is fifteen minutes away while Denver's is ninety — worth checking fares to both. Put all three in the guide.
A few composite engagements drawn from how Cavmir typically works in this market. The details are illustrative and consistent with Colorado Springs, not pulled from a single named client.
A couple with a permitted bungalow near Old Colorado City rented it around their own travel but booked weakly — phone photos, no mention of the Garden ten minutes away, and no plan for the graduation and Hill Climb weeks that sold out the neighborhood around them.
Cavmir reshot the house and the red rocks in early light, rewrote the listing around the westside location and the family's local knowledge, built event pricing for Academy graduation and race week a year out, and added a simple direct-booking page.
The calendar filled around the owners' own schedule at meaningfully stronger rates, graduation week booked out the day dates published, and repeat guests — Academy parents on a four-year cycle — began rebooking direct.
An investor's permitted unit in a mixed-use zone competed against dozens of similar downtown listings with nothing distinctive — generic decor photos, no neighborhood story, and pricing that ignored the museum, stadium and conference calendar entirely.
Cavmir built the listing around what the zone actually offers — walk to the Olympic museum, the ballpark and Tejon Street — reshot the unit with the peak framed from the rooftop, priced the event calendar deliberately, and made the permit and insurance compliance quietly visible.
The unit separated from the downtown comp set within a quarter, midweek business and event stays firmed up the occupancy base, and the compliance-forward presentation converted the cautious, higher-value bookers the generic listings never reach.
A small inn with genuine 1900s bones was invisible online — an outdated website, OTA dependence on nearly every booking, and photography that hid the porch, the gardens and the peak view that were the whole point.
Cavmir rebuilt the brand and direct-booking website around the inn's history and the westside setting, reshot the property at golden hour, ran search marketing for Colorado Springs inn and B&B terms, and built packages around graduation, the Hill Climb and fall canyon color.
Direct bookings grew into a durable share of revenue, event-week packages sold out ahead of the OTA calendar, and returning families — some on their third Academy cycle — finally booked through a channel the inn owned.
Talk to Cavmir today. We'll show you exactly what your Colorado Springs property is leaving on the table — and how fast we can change that.
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