Marketing for Ellicottville short-term rentals that lifts both bookings and nightly rate, from slope-area chalets that host ski groups at Holiday Valley to condos a short walk from the village's shops and bars, homes near HoliMont's private club and country houses in the Town of Great Valley.
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* Market averages from AirROI data for the Town of Ellicottville, New York, twelve months to September 2026 (192 active listings, published October 1, 2026); AirROI's separate Village of Ellicottville and Town of Great Valley markets are named as such in the copy. ROI is Cavmir's estimate. A single home's numbers depend on its size, its location and how it is marketed.
Cavmir is an Airbnb marketing agency. We build the brand, the direct-booking website and the marketing for short-term rentals in Ellicottville.
Ellicottville is both a village and the town that surrounds it, in Cattaraugus County in the Southern Tier of Western New York. The village keeps its shops, bars and restaurants on a few walkable blocks, and two ski areas sit just outside it: Holiday Valley, the public resort, and HoliMont, a private ski club. The Ellicottville Chamber of Commerce counts more than 24 shops, 23 bars and restaurants and both ski slopes within walking distance of one another, and it puts the area's visitors at more than 1.7 million a year, from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Southern Ontario. South of the village, the Town of Great Valley adds country houses, cabins and the fall farm at Pumpkinville. Entire homes make up 96 percent of AirROI's Town of Ellicottville listings, and 58 percent of them sleep eight or more guests, so this is a market built for groups.
Four products share the market, and they price differently. Big chalets with four, five or more bedrooms host ski groups and extended families, and in AirROI's Town of Ellicottville data the homes with five or more bedrooms earn a median of $78,200 a year at about $771 a night, against $41,600 for four bedrooms and $23,000 or less for one, two and three bedrooms. Condos and smaller houses in the village sell the walk to dinner, the bars after skiing and the festival weekends. Houses near HoliMont sit beside a club whose weekends belong to its members, which changes what you can promise a renter. Country houses in Great Valley sell room to spread out, a fire pit and an easy drive to both mountains. A listing called 'Ellicottville ski house' competes with every one of them, and with the rooms at Holiday Valley's own two hotels.
The calendar peaks in winter and has a second, smaller top in July. In AirROI's twelve months to September 2026, February 2026 earned the most per Town listing, about $7,312 at 50.6 percent occupancy and $472 a night, with January close behind at about $7,208; across two years of data, April is the low month at about $2,480. July 2026 brought about $4,739, the best month outside the ski season, with Holiday Valley's slope-side concerts and fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend, and October 2025 stays were booked further ahead than any other month's. Guests are mostly American, 94 percent by AirROI's count, and they drive: Buffalo is the top origin city, at 12.3 percent of reviewers, followed by Rochester, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New York. Canada accounts for 5.4 percent of the Town's reviewers and 6.4 percent of the Village's, where Toronto makes the top five cities.
What sets Ellicottville apart is the distance between the top of the market and the middle. AirROI's average Town listing takes in about $37,054 a year at $399 a night and 31.2 percent occupancy, down 5.1 percent on the year, against a New York State average of about $34,094. The median listing gets about $325 a night and books about 26 percent of the nights it's open; for the top quarter those figures are $520 and 45 percent or more, and for the top tenth $725 and 66 percent or more. Per month, the median listing takes in about $2,890, the top quarter at least $5,630 and the top tenth at least $9,080, and the Town's best single listing, a six-bedroom home, grossed about $173,664 at $803 a night. AirROI's bedroom and amenity figures, further down this page, show what pays here: beds for a whole group, and heat and hot water after a day on the hill. The rest is marketing work: build the listing for the group that's coming, show the hot tub and the fireplace early in the photos, price ski weekends and holiday weeks on their own, and give the house a summer and fall offer so it keeps earning after the lifts stop.
Nearby Markets: Niagara Falls | Erie | Cook Forest
Photo: Andre Carrotflower · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Cavmir treats each Ellicottville rental as a small hospitality brand with guests of its own: the chalet that Buffalo families book for the same Presidents' Day week every winter, the village condo whose guests walk to dinner and back, the Great Valley farmhouse that a Pittsburgh group rents for the fall color. A generic ski listing can't do that work. We reach the travelers who pick Ellicottville deliberately, the ski group planning next winter around a five-bedroom house, the Toronto family crossing at Niagara for a week on the slopes, the couple coming for the Fall Festival or the July concerts, on Google, in AI assistants and through an email list that brings last winter's group back to your door.
Ellicottville started as a land office town. The village was first settled in 1815, and when Cattaraugus County was organized on March 28, 1817, Ellicottville was designated its county seat. The Holland Land Company kept an office here where parcels were sold and deeds were filed, and the village carries the name of Joseph Ellicott, the company's agent. The Legislature carved the Town of Ellicottville out of the Town of Ischua on April 13, 1820, and the village incorporated in 1837. For 51 years Ellicottville was the seat of county government, until the railroad redrew the map: the Erie line came through Little Valley, with service from 1851, and in 1868 the county seat moved there. Ellicottville turned to lumber and wood products, from furniture and lockers to hand tools, and became an important farming center.
Skiing arrived early. Doc Northrup and Karl Fahrner started the first organized skiing in Ellicottville on Fish Hill in 1935, the Ellicottville Ski Club formed in 1938, a rope tow went up on Greer Hill, and the social side of the sport happened at the Lincoln Hotel, now the Ellicottville Inn. In 1956 Dick Congdon, John Fisher and Bill Northrup set out to build a larger, modern ski area and sold $100 shares from a card table in a parking lot. Four slopes were cut and a T-bar built in 1957, and after a mild early winter held up the start, Holiday Valley opened on January 7, 1958, with its first skiers coming down Yodeler, Champagne, Holiday Run and Edelweiss. The resort counts Edna Northrup among its founders, and Edna's, the restaurant in its Tamarack Club, is named for one of its founding members. Today Holiday Valley runs 13 lifts and 60 slopes and trails, with three base lodges, two hotels, a golf course and pools, and its 69th season is set to open on November 27, 2026, weather permitting.
HoliMont grew up next door as a different kind of place. William Merk, who had skied the Greer and Holiday Valley areas for years, decided to start a private ski club; the first trail was cut in 1961, seven more followed in 1962, the club's first official season, and the Greer Hill chair was added in 1995. HoliMont now calls itself America's largest private ski club, with eight chairlifts, 55 trails, snowmaking across all of them and about 180 inches of snow a year, and its page for Canadian members says 42 percent of its members already come from the Canadian side of the falls, with Toronto less than three hours away. The club sells day tickets to the public Monday through Friday, except during Christmas week, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and on Presidents' Day, and it keeps weekends and those holidays for members and their accompanied guests; HoliMont says it's the only private ski area in the country that welcomes the public on weekdays. That one rule shapes the marketing of every rental near it.
The rental market today is mid-sized, earns well at the top and is a little smaller than a year ago. AirROI counts 192 active listings in the Town of Ellicottville, down 4 percent, averaging about $37,054 a year; its separate Village of Ellicottville market counts 134, down 9 percent, at about $27,152, with more private rooms and listings typed as hotels or boutique stays in the mix; and the Town of Great Valley counts 68, down 8 percent, at about $31,796, where the top listing, a seven-bedroom house, grossed about $203,090 at $892 a night. Since the spring of 2025 the Town has required a license for every rental, capped licenses for second homes and required the license number in every ad, and the Village charges its own license fee by bedroom count. Yet AirROI's listing data, which it says doesn't capture every scheme, found a license number on none of the Town's 192 listings, none of Great Valley's 68 and only 10 percent of the Village's 134. We check a listing for the costly gaps first, the ones that lose bookings or put a license at risk: no license number in the listing, a guest count above the Town's limit of two per bedroom plus two, a chalet that promises HoliMont on a Saturday, a house with nothing to sell between March and November, and no way for returning families and ski groups to book direct.
Ellicottville pricing is tiered by bedrooms first, because ski groups pay for beds. In AirROI's Town of Ellicottville data, one-bedroom homes average about $222 a night, two bedrooms $290, three bedrooms $341, four bedrooms $474 and five or more about $771, and the median annual revenue jumps from $19,300 for three bedrooms to $41,600 for four and $78,200 for five or more. About 39 percent of the Town's entire homes have at least four bedrooms. Market-wide, the median nightly rate is about $325, the top quarter's is $520 or more, the top tenth's $725 or more and the bottom quarter's $240 or less. The amenity data shows what a winter guest pays for: the third of listings with a hot tub averaged about $62,500 a year against $24,300 for those without, the 8 percent with a sauna about $68,700 against $34,400, and listings with an indoor fireplace about $43,400 against $21,700. Those gaps describe the kind of house that has the feature, not only the feature itself, but the direction is clear: after a cold day on the hill, guests pay for heat and hot water.
The calendar sets the rest of the price. AirROI's high season, December through February, averages about $6,620 a month per listing at 45 percent occupancy and $451 a night; July, the shoulder month, about $4,290 at 34 percent and $388; and the eight low months (March to June, then August to November) about $3,150 at 29 percent and $374. Guests book about 67 days ahead on average. In the twelve months to September 2026, October 2025 stays were booked about 82 days out and December's about 81, while April and May 2026 stays came in about 51 and 49 days ahead. The average stay is 3.9 nights; December 2025 ran longest, at 4.9 nights over the holidays, and March 2026 shortest, at 2.6. Check-in at 3 p.m. is the most common setting, used by about half of the listings that state a time, and 11 a.m. is the usual check-out.
Two mistakes cost the most here: pricing a ski chalet as if it were a summer cottage, and letting fees and house rules erode the total. Ten skiers sharing a house divide the total and hold it up against a block of resort rooms, so price the group product, list a bed for every adult and spell out what a house gives a group that hotel rooms can't: a kitchen, a big table, a hot tub and one living room for everyone. In AirROI's Town data, 88.5 percent of listings charge a cleaning fee; the median is $161 and the average $252, which adds roughly $40 a night and comes to about 11 percent of gross revenue. A two-night minimum is the norm, set by 56 percent of listings, while 41 percent accept a single night, so a one-night booking on a February Saturday can block a better two- or three-night stay. Cancellation terms run strict, with more than 70 percent of listings on Firm or stricter policies, and only about 35 percent use Instant Book.
Moderate seasonality with a winter top. February earned about 2.9 times what April did across AirROI's two years of data, and the high season, December through February, brings about $6,620 a month per listing against about $3,150 in the low months. The ski season starts with Holiday Valley's opening day, set for November 27, 2026, weather permitting, and HoliMont's projected opening on December 12; Christmas in Ellicottville comes on November 28 and 29, A Christmas Stroll on December 12, and the holiday weeks bring the longest stays of the year. January brings Holiday Valley's Canadian Friendship Week, January 4 to 8, 2027, and the Chamber's Winter Blues Weekend, January 15 to 17; February has the Winter Music Jam, February 12 to 14, and Presidents' Day, when HoliMont closes to the public; and the season winds down with the Chamber's Mardi Gras Weekend, March 12 to 14, 2027.
Summer and fall make a second, smaller business. July 2026 earned about $4,739 per Town listing, helped by Holiday Valley's Summer Music Festival, slope-side concerts from July 3 to 5 with fireworks on the Sunday night, and in AirROI's Great Valley market July ran at 42.7 percent occupancy, its best month outside the ski season. Then come the mountain bike trails, the golf course, Pumpkinville's daily season from mid-September through Halloween, and the Fall Festival, which turns four blocks of the village into an arts and crafts show; the 2026 festival has come and gone, and the next is set for October 9 and 10, 2027. A house that sells summer and fall as products of their own, with the deck, the grill, the fire pit and a place for bikes in the photos, a weekday rate and a two-night minimum only on the weekends that earn it, fills nights a ski-only listing never sees.
Start with the state, which taxes a short stay the way it taxes a hotel room. Under New York's short-term rental law, which became law on December 24, 2024, and the chapter amendment signed on February 28, 2025, state and local sales tax applies from March 1, 2025, to the rent for a short-term rental unit, which the Tax Department describes as all or part of a building used to lodge guests, from a house, apartment, condo or cabin to a single room, whenever the rent is more than $2 a unit per day. The combined rate in Cattaraugus County, which takes in Ellicottville and Great Valley, is 8 percent. A booking service that arranges a stay must register with the Tax Department and collect the tax, and an owner whose every booking runs through such a service doesn't have to register, provided the service has issued Form ST-155, its Booking Service Certificate of Collection, or publishes an agreement saying it collects. Take even some bookings directly and you need your own sales tax registration, with returns due on the schedule you're assigned, quarterly, monthly or annually, even for periods with no sales. Airbnb collects state and local sales tax on New York reservations of 89 nights or fewer outside New York City, cleaning fee included. The same legislation set up county short-term rental registries: according to the New York State Association of Counties, the registry provisions took effect around September 25, 2025, every county outside New York City must keep a registry unless it opted out by local law by about June 25, 2026, registry counties receive quarterly booking reports from the platforms, and a platform faces fines of $500 a day per violation once a county's registry exists. Cattaraugus County's occupancy-tax page doesn't mention a registry, so ask the county before you list whether it runs one.
Cattaraugus County adds its own occupancy tax of 5 percent under the Cattaraugus County Occupancy Tax Law, Local Law 21 of 2003, on any facility that lodges guests overnight, and the treasurer's list of facilities includes cabins, condominiums, cottages and tourist homes. Operators register with the treasurer at least 20 days before they open, receive a Certificate of Authority to display at the property and file a return every quarter whether or not any tax was collected: by March 20 for December through February, June 20 for March through May, September 20 for June through August and December 20 for September through November, with a separate registration for each location. Airbnb lists the county's 5 percent hotel and motel tax among the taxes it collects, on reservations of 59 nights or fewer, and the treasurer says most Airbnb properties in the county have it remitted for them every quarter, while owners listing on Vrbo or other sites will most likely need to remit it themselves.
The Town and the Village each license rentals under their own zoning law, so first confirm which one covers your address. In the Town of Ellicottville, the rules come from Local Law No. 1 of 2025, a zoning amendment the Town Board adopted on February 19, 2025, set to take effect on March 1, 2025, or once filed with the Secretary of State if that came later, and which gave existing rentals 90 days to comply. A short-term rental is any stay under 30 consecutive days, and it's allowed in all of the Town's zoning districts but one, only with a short-term rental license. A license runs for a year and expires on February 28 no matter when it was issued, renewals are due within the 60 days before that, and the Building Official inspects before a license is issued and may inspect again before a renewal. The law separates a principal dwelling, where someone lives at least 184 days a year, from a secondary dwelling, a second home or an investment house. There's no limit on licenses for principal dwellings, but the yearly number of licenses for secondary dwellings is based on the count issued in the law's first year, and no owner may hold more than one secondary-dwelling license unless the others were issued in that first year and renewed every year since. The Town's April 2025 application lists a non-refundable fee of $200 for a principal dwelling, with two proofs of residency, and $700 for a secondary dwelling. A license belongs to the owner and the site: it expires automatically on a sale or transfer of the property, a new owner applies with a new fee, and no license is issued or renewed while code cases, fines or Town liens are outstanding.
The Town's license also fixes the guest count by formula: two guests per bedroom that meets the state fire and building code, plus two for the house, so a five-bedroom home is licensed for at most twelve overnight guests, and between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. no more than twice that number may be on the property. An efficiency unit gets one guest per 120 square feet, up to three. The inspection looks for working smoke alarms in every bedroom, outside each sleeping area and on every story, including the basement; a fire extinguisher in the kitchen and at each main exit; carbon monoxide detection within 10 feet of the entrance to sleeping areas and in any room with a fuel-burning appliance; vented fireplaces, inserts and heaters; clear exits; sound wiring; and an exterior door or an egress window in every bedroom. While the house is rented, an owner or contact person must answer around the clock and get to the property within an hour of a complaint, and the neighbors next door must have that person's number and yours. The license number has to appear prominently in every listing and advertisement, any listing that shows up in a platform search for stays under 30 days counts as short-term rental advertising, and you can't advertise more guests than the license allows. The law also allows one booking per property per day, requires every car to park on the property rather than on the lawn or the street, asks for covered trash with weekly pickup, bars campers, RVs and tents as extra sleeping space, and bans weddings, banquets and corporate events: the house is for overnight lodging only. Inside, post the license number, the owner's and contact person's details, the guest limit, the trash, noise and parking rules and local emergency information, and use a rental agreement that lets you cancel at least a full week before arrival if the license is suspended or revoked. Operating or advertising without a license carries a fine of $1,000 to $2,000; other violations carry up to $1,000, then $1,000 to $2,000 and $2,000 to $4,000 for repeats within five years, each day counts as a separate violation, unpaid fines can be added to the property's Town taxes, and an owner whose license is revoked waits a year to apply again.
The Village of Ellicottville runs its own short-term rental license. Under its current application, short-term rentals are allowed only in the districts its land use tables permit, in Section 3B of the Village Zoning Law, Local Law 1 of 2019; the license runs from January 1 to December 31 and must be renewed every year; it isn't transferable and lapses with any sale or transfer of the property; and the license number must be posted on every platform and inside the rental. Every car parks on site, never on the street or the lawn, the number of vehicles can't exceed the permitted occupancy, and vehicles that seat 12 or more, RVs and trailers aren't allowed. Trash follows the village's rules and schedule, noise follows the Village Noise Ordinance, Local Law 6 of 2006, and a local contact within 25 miles must be reachable at all times. The fee is $400 for a studio to two bedrooms, $750 for three or four and $1,000 for five or more, with a notarized affidavit; Airbnb's help page for the village still shows older fees of $75 to $200, so go by the village's own form.
The Town of Great Valley posts a short-term rental law and a license application on its planning and zoning page. Under that text, rentals are allowed in every zoning district and on every day of the year, with an annual license from the code enforcement officer after an on-site inspection, a local contact who lives or keeps a business within 60 minutes and is available at all times, a certificate of insurance for short-term or vacation rental use, confirmation that you're set up for the county hotel tax and state sales tax, the license number and maximum occupancy on every listing and posted within ten feet of the main entrance, on-site parking, no vehicles that seat 12 or more and no RVs or trailers. Occupancy is set at the inspection, and fees run from $100 for a studio or one bedroom to $400 for four bedrooms or more. The posted copy is still headed 'Proposed Local Law No. 1-2022', so confirm the adopted text and current fees with the town. Condominium and homeowners associations around the ski areas can be stricter than any of these laws, and the Town of Ellicottville's application asks whether a deed or association restriction applies. Use this section for orientation, not as legal advice: check the current rules with the Town, the Village, Great Valley, Cattaraugus County and the state, and read your association's documents, before you list. Cavmir handles the marketing side, while licensing, inspections and tax returns remain the owner's job, ideally with a local attorney and accountant.
First, package the ski trip for groups, and be exact about the two mountains. Holiday Valley is the public resort and sells lift tickets to anyone. HoliMont's public days are the weekdays outside its holiday periods, and its guest lift cards are sold only to members, through the club's main office. A house near HoliMont shouldn't promise renters a Saturday on its slopes, then: put a weekday HoliMont plan and a weekend Holiday Valley plan side by side, and if you're a member, read the club's guest rules before you mention it at all. Ski groups travel with a lot of gear and want their own bed for each adult, bathrooms enough for everyone leaving at once, a warm place to dry boots and gloves, a big table and a hot tub at the end of the day. Give them a ski page with the drive to each base lodge, the bed list, the parking your license allows and a first-refusal offer on next winter's dates.
Second, market to Canada on purpose. HoliMont says 42 percent of its members come from the Canadian side of the falls and puts Toronto less than three hours away, Holiday Valley's events page lists a Canadian Friendship Week from January 4 to 8, 2027, with 30 percent off lift tickets and equipment rentals, HoliMont's calendar includes a Canadian March Break week with lift tickets sold at par, and AirROI counts Canada as the source of 5.4 percent of the Town's reviewers and 6.4 percent of the Village's. It's a small share, but a reachable one. Name the drive from Toronto and the nearest crossing in the listing, explain check-in for a group arriving after a border wait, show the full price clearly, and put a March Break offer in front of Ontario families in January, since March stays in the Town were booked about 56 days ahead in 2026. A small paid search and social test aimed at Toronto, Hamilton and the Niagara region shows quickly whether that guest is worth chasing for your house.
Third, build the summer and fall product before the snow melts. Holiday Valley's summer runs on 35 miles of cross-country mountain bike trails in McCarty State Forest, weekend lift-served riding on the Spruce Lake chairlift, the 18-hole Double Black Diamond golf course and the Summer Music Festival over the Fourth of July weekend; HoliMont's bike park opened its 2026 season on June 19; and Pumpkinville in Great Valley runs daily from mid-September through Halloween. AirROI's amenity data says outdoor space pays here too: Town listings with a BBQ grill averaged about $45,700 a year against $24,100 without, and those with outdoor dining about $47,100 against $28,000. Put the deck, the grill, the fire pit and the bike storage in a summer photo set, publish a weekday rate for June and August, write search content for the bike trails and the fall season, and keep two-night minimums for the festival weekends.
Fourth, build for the return visit, and count operations as part of the marketing. A group that returns every February is worth several one-off bookings, so make returning easy: a direct-booking website of your own and an early-fall mailing to last winter's guests before the dates go public. The review bar is high: the Town's listings average 4.90 stars in AirROI's data and 64 percent hold Airbnb's Guest Favorite badge, while value scores lowest of the categories at 4.78, which tells you the total price is where guests push back. Operations show up in the reviews as well: a contact who can reach the house within the hour, the license number posted inside, a guest count inside your license, a plowed driveway with room for every car the license allows, and a check-in that works after a dark winter drive from Cleveland or Toronto. For a rest day, the welcome book can point guests south to Allegany State Park, the largest of New York's state parks at 65,000 acres, and to the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum in Salamanca, which the Seneca Nation, governed under its own constitution since 1848, operates to present the history and the living culture of the Iroquois, with the Seneca at its center.
Local rules cap supply and decide what you can sell. In the Town, licenses for second homes are capped at a number based on those issued in the law's first year, an owner can't add a second secondary-dwelling license, and every license ends when the house is sold, so the buyer of an investment chalet can't count on getting one. Guest counts follow a formula, two per code-compliant bedroom plus two, which can sit below what a house's bunk rooms would hold, and weddings and other events are banned outright. In the Village, the license is also tied to the owner and ends at a sale, and the fee for the biggest homes is $1,000 a year. Before you buy, ask the code enforcement office whether a license is available for the parcel and how many guests the house would be licensed for, then run your numbers at that count.
Winter and distance ask for preparation. Ski season means snow on the driveway, roads that need care after dark, ice on decks and steps, and fireplaces, saunas and hot tubs that need servicing between groups, and the Town's inspection checks that fireplaces and fuel-burning heaters are vented and that carbon monoxide detection sits near every sleeping area. Absentee owners have a quieter problem: a house run from Pittsburgh, Cleveland or Toronto slowly falls behind, with old photos, slow answers and a summer calendar no one is managing. The Town already requires a contact who can reach the house within an hour; a capable local operations partner and current marketing cover the rest.
Competition here is experienced. In AirROI's Town data, Superhosts run about 68 percent of the listings, more than half have a co-host, and the ten biggest hosts hold 26 percent of them. Average revenue fell 5.1 percent in a year while the listing count fell 4 percent, and the monthly gap is wide, $5,630 or more for the top quarter against $1,470 or less for the bottom, so a listing that stays the same loses ground. A ski group's other option is a block of rooms at the resort's own two hotels. A chalet beats that offer with a kitchen, one big room where everyone can sit together, a hot tub and a bed for each adult, as long as the title, the photos and the first lines of the description spell it out.
Insurance here has to cover winter and groups. The Town of Ellicottville requires a sworn statement that you carry insurance explicitly covering short-term rental activity, and Great Valley asks for a certificate showing the house is insured as a short-term or vacation rental. Look for a homeowner's policy written to permit short-term renting, or a separate rental policy, with liability coverage big enough for ten or more guests around a hot tub or sauna, and review snow load, ice dams, frozen pipes and falls on icy steps with the agent. Tell your carrier the house is rented, and use a broker who already insures ski homes in Cattaraugus County.
Rental income is taxable by New York and the IRS. Guests pay New York sales tax at the 8 percent combined rate in Cattaraugus County and the county's 5 percent occupancy tax; Airbnb collects both on its bookings within its stay limits, and the county treasurer says hosts on Vrbo and similar sites will most likely remit the occupancy tax themselves. On direct bookings you register for sales tax, register with the county treasurer and file both. Before you budget property tax, ask the assessor how a rental house is valued, and keep a New York accountant who handles short-term rentals.
Most buyers here use conventional or jumbo loans, and lenders will treat the house as a second home or as an investment property based on your own use; a careful one will want revenue modeled month by month, with the winter weight showing, rather than a flat average. Movoto put the median list price of Ellicottville homes at $319,000 in September 2026, against $429,900 for 2025 on the same page, with 136 active listings and homes selling after about 122 days on the market; that median covers every kind of home, so check sales of comparable chalets before you set a budget. Underwrite the license as well: in the Town it ends at a sale and second-home licenses are capped, so model the purchase with and without one.
Ellicottville's outlook rests on reasons to visit that no booking site controls. Holiday Valley begins its 69th season in late November 2026, HoliMont has run as a private club since 1962 and still sells weekday tickets to the public, the village has kept its walkable blocks of shops, bars and restaurants, and the Chamber, founded in 1948, produces and manages 18 festivals and events. The Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland and Pittsburgh drive markets sit within a day's drive, and so do the Ontario families who cross the border for a ski week.
Three things deserve watching: rules, taxes and supply. The Town's cap ties its count of second-home licenses to the first year's number, and because a license ends at a sale, a buyer competes for an available license rather than inheriting one. The state's county registry framework is new, so watch whether Cattaraugus County keeps or starts a registry and what registration costs. Listings fell in all three of AirROI's markets over the year, 4 percent in the Town, 9 percent in the Village and 8 percent in Great Valley, which can work in favor of owners who stay licensed and run their houses well.
The other change is in how guests find a house. More travelers now put specific questions to AI assistants and search engines instead of only scrolling a platform, and the rentals named in those answers publish plain, structured facts: the bed list for a ski group, the drive to each base lodge, which mountain a renter can ski on a Saturday, the licensed guest count and the summer offer, all on a quick site that AI tools can parse. Read our generative engine optimization guide for vacation rental owners for the mechanics. Ski groups here plan their winter months in advance and arrive with specific questions, and a house whose site answers them in plain language is the one an assistant can quote.
In Ellicottville, specific facts do the selling. There's a public mountain just outside the village, a private club next door with rules of its own, a main street of shops and bars you can walk after dinner, and a story that runs from a Holland Land Company office to a card table where the first Holiday Valley shares were sold. When a listing says which mountain, which bedrooms and which season it's built for, it draws the guest who's shopping for this place in particular, and that's the guest who comes back.
What I love here, as a marketer, is the number of seasons the year gives you to sell, each with a guest of its own. February belongs to ski groups and holiday families, January to the Canadian families on their friendship week, July to the concerts on the slopes and the bike trails, and October to the Fall Festival and the farms in Great Valley. An owner who splits one ski listing into a winter product, a summer product and a fall product gets three chances a year to be the house a guest picks, instead of one.
And the material is generous. A ski club whose early skiers were towed uphill on a sled behind a Sno-Cat, a resort funded with $100 shares sold from a card table, a restaurant named for a founder, a club where 42 percent of the members come from Canada, and a village that lost the county seat to a railroad add up to more true stories than a welcome book can carry. We don't need to make anything up. The work is spotting the detail an owner has stopped noticing and showing it to the guest who's searching for exactly that.
What goes in an Ellicottville welcome book when Cavmir writes it: specific, checked local tips that read like advice from a neighbor, the kind of detail guests mention in five-star reviews.
The public resort just outside the village runs 13 lifts and 60 slopes and trails from three base lodges. Its 69th season is set to open on November 27, 2026, weather permitting, and the resort's first skiers, in January 1958, came down Yodeler, Champagne, Holiday Run and Edelweiss after a mild early winter delayed opening day.
On weekdays outside Christmas week and the two Monday holidays, the private club sells public day tickets with full access to its lifts, the Gear Up rental shop, ski school lessons and Dina's at the Mont. Weekends belong to members and their guests, so send renters on a Tuesday, not a Saturday. The 2026–27 season is projected to open on December 12.
Holiday Valley's restaurant in the Tamarack Club serves lunch, dinner and après-ski, with stone-hearth pizzas, salads, burgers and desserts, and it looks out over the slopes in winter and over the golf course and the pools in summer. It's named for one of the resort's founding members.
Inside the Tamarack Club, with therapeutic, hot stone and deep tissue massage, manicures and pedicures, and Eminence Organic skin care. Book ahead for ski weekends and holiday weeks, and put the booking link in the welcome book for the members of the group who'd rather not ski every day.
Holiday Valley's 18-hole, par-70 course carries the resort through summer, and its practice facility is open daily from 8 a.m. until dark. It suits a family that splits up for the day, with golf for some and a lift-served bike ride or the pools for the rest.
Holiday Valley counts 35 miles of cross-country trails in McCarty State Forest at its doorstep. On weekends, when the Spruce Lake chairlift runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., riders load their bikes and start from the top, for $30 with their own bike; bikes have to weigh under 60 pounds and meet the lift's 24-inch minimum.
HoliMont's summer bike park opened its 2026 season on Friday, June 19, and runs Fridays and weekends into the fall, typically until late October, weather permitting. Walk-up day passes are sold at the Ticket and Gear Hut on any day it's open, weekends included, and passes can also be bought online before you arrive.
At 4844 Sugartown Road, a few minutes from Ellicottville, the farm opens daily from mid-September through Halloween (September 12 to October 31 in 2026), from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., closing at 5 p.m. on Halloween, with a pumpkin patch, a corn maze, farm animals and more than 35 activities. It runs almost entirely on cards, so tell guests to bring one.
The Chamber calls it its largest event: four blocks of the village become an arts and crafts show, with chairlift rides, live music and the village's shops and restaurants open around it. After the 2026 festival, the next one is set for October 9 and 10, 2027, so open those dates early and price them as a weekend of their own.
Holiday Valley's slope-side concerts ran July 3 to 5, 2026, with two bands a night at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m. and the resort's annual fireworks around 10:30 p.m. on the Sunday. The resort sells a lodging-and-concert package for the weekend, so a house nearby should price that weekend against it.
The Town of Ellicottville's arboretum sits at 28 Parkside Drive and is managed by the Nannen Arboretum Society, a volunteer nonprofit whose memorial program plants a tree or shrub in the name of someone who touched the giver's life. A quiet hour between the slopes and dinner.
Guests who find an Ellicottville rental on Airbnb search its name afterwards, and the page they should land on is the owner’s own site. Cavmir builds vacation rental websites of 40 to 125 pages in the owner’s brand. For a home that only lists on Airbnb, that is a website for your Airbnb: your name and domain, your photos, your area guides and your reviews, with a button that sends guests to the listing. For homes on Hostaway, Guesty or Hospitable it is a direct booking website: live availability and prices from the PMS, the whole stay priced before checkout, and the booking completed in the PMS. Both start from the same vacation rental website design, run the TrollBuster™ compliance scan before launch, and are yours at launch: domain, code, content and photos.
The guide pages of an Ellicottville site can start with the picks on this page: Holiday Valley, HoliMont and Edna's at the Tamarack Club. Each one is a search a guest makes before choosing a home, and each becomes a page that leads to the booking button.
Packages start at $1,475 for the Starter Website (40 pages, two to three weeks) and run to $3,732 for Full with Direct Booking (125 pages, booking synced with your PMS); the current prices are on the pricing page.
Three property types that do well in Ellicottville, a common starting point for each, and the plan Cavmir builds for it.
A second home a short drive from the base lodges that lists as a generic 'Ellicottville ski house', advertises sleeping for sixteen in bunk rooms against a license formula that allows twelve, shows no license number, promises HoliMont on weekends and earns almost nothing between March and November.
Start by confirming the secondary-dwelling license, the licensed guest count and the parking; then rewrite the listing for the ski group: the license number in the listing, a bed for every adult up to the licensed twelve, the hot tub, the sauna and the fireplace in the first photos, the drive to each base lodge, and a ski page that pairs weekday HoliMont with weekend Holiday Valley. Add a summer and fall product built on the bike trails, the golf course and Pumpkinville, a Canadian Friendship Week and March Break offer for Ontario families, and a direct-booking page where last winter's groups can rebook.
The plan aims to hold a high winter rate inside the license and to add paid nights from June to October. Track January and February nightly rate, July to October occupancy, the number of bookings of three nights or longer, repeat group bookings, bookings from Canada and the share booked direct.
A licensed village condo a short walk from the shops that competes with slope-side chalets on ski photos it can't win, never mentions the Fall Festival, the July concerts or the walk to dinner, takes one-night bookings that block ski weekends and goes quiet from April to June.
Confirm the village license, the association's rental rules and the vehicle limit first, then reposition the condo as the walk-everywhere base: walking times to the village's restaurants, bars and festival blocks, a two-night minimum on ski weekends and festival dates, offers for Christmas in Ellicottville, Mardi Gras Weekend, the Summer Music Festival and the Fall Festival, a midweek rate for spring and early summer, and search content for village and festival queries backed by a direct-booking page.
Aims to fill festival weekends and the spring and early-summer months at a steady rate, without chasing ski groups it can't win. Measure festival-weekend rates, April to June occupancy, midweek nights, search traffic for village terms and direct bookings.
A farmhouse on a few acres south of the village with a wood stove and a fire pit, listed only for ski season, with a cleaning fee well above the local median, no license number in the listing and nothing to say about summer or fall.
Confirm the Great Valley license, the inspected occupancy and the parking first, then sell the space: the fire pit, the grill and the outdoor table in the photo set, a fall page built on Pumpkinville and the Fall Festival, a summer page on the bike trails, golf and the Fourth of July concerts, and a winter page that gives the drive to both mountains and the weekday HoliMont plan. Bring the cleaning fee closer to the local median, add weekday and weekly rates, and add Toronto and Cleveland to the paid search targets.
Aimed at more summer and fall nights and a better value score. Track September and October occupancy, July revenue, the value rating in reviews, stays of five nights or more and bookings from Ontario.
Yes. Owners in the Town and Village of Ellicottville and in Great Valley hire us for branding, listing rewrites, photo shot lists, direct-booking websites, search visibility and paid ads; ski chalets, village condos and country houses are the property types we plan for most here. Cavmir is a marketing agency, so cleaning, check-ins and maintenance stay in your hands or your local manager's.
In AirROI's Town of Ellicottville data for the twelve months to September 2026, the average listing earned about $37,054, at $399 a night and 31.2 percent occupancy, 5.1 percent less than the year before. Monthly, the median listing brings in about $2,890 and the top quarter at least $5,630, and the five-bedroom-plus homes reach a median of $78,200 a year. AirROI's separate Village of Ellicottville market averages about $27,152 and its Town of Great Valley market about $31,796. These are market averages, not a projection for any one house; the product, the listing and the pricing decide where yours lands.
Winter, with February the top month and January close behind; February 2026 ran at 50.6 percent occupancy and $472 a night in AirROI's Town data. The late-December holiday week brings the longest stays of the year, July is the strongest month outside ski season, with Holiday Valley's Summer Music Festival over the Fourth of July weekend, and October stays book further ahead than any other month's, with the Fall Festival in town. April earns the least.
Yes, by more than one government. The Town of Ellicottville requires a license that expires every February 28, inspects before licensing, ties the number of second-home licenses to the count issued in the law's first year, limits guests to two per bedroom plus two and fines unlicensed rentals $1,000 to $2,000. The Village of Ellicottville has its own calendar-year license, priced by bedrooms from $400 to $1,000, and both require the license number in your listings. Great Valley licenses rentals separately. Check the details with each office before you list; we do the marketing, and licensing questions belong with them and your lawyer.
On its own bookings, yes. Airbnb collects New York sales tax, 8 percent combined in Cattaraugus County, on reservations of 89 nights or fewer, and the county's 5 percent hotel and motel tax on reservations of 59 nights or fewer. Other platforms may not, and the county treasurer says hosts on Vrbo and similar sites will most likely need to remit the occupancy tax themselves. On direct bookings you register with the state and the county and collect and file both taxes yourself.
On weekdays, yes. HoliMont is a private club that sells day tickets to the public Monday through Friday, except during Christmas week, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and on Presidents' Day. Weekends and those holidays are for members and their accompanied guests, and guest passes are sold only to members through the club's main office. Holiday Valley, the public resort just outside the village, is the weekend answer for most renters, so say so in your listing.
You can buy the house, but not its license. In the Town, a license belongs to the owner and the site and expires automatically when the property is sold or transferred, and if the house will be a second home, you need one of the capped secondary-dwelling licenses, which may not be available. In the Village, the license can't be transferred either and ends at the sale. Ask the code enforcement office what applies to the address before you set a price, and model the purchase with and without a license.
Cost follows scope. Monthly plans and single-project prices are posted on our pricing page. Owners here often start with a rebuilt listing, or with the full 12-step system when the house needs more, and the first conversation costs nothing: reach Cavmir here.
Send us the listing and we'll tell you what we'd change. Not a pitch deck — a straight read on your photos, your title, your rates against the Ellicottville comp set, and whether a direct-booking site would pay for itself.
You'll hear back from a person, usually inside one business day. If we don't think we can move your numbers, we'll say so. Cavmir is a short-term rental marketing agency — we position and market properties, we don't manage them.
Demand in Ellicottville peaks around January through February and runs quietest around April. Here is how the year actually books — and what to do about each stretch of the calendar.
Ellicottville's high season is the heart of winter. January and February earn the most, as ski groups and families fill the big chalets around Holiday Valley and HoliMont, and the week between Christmas and New Year's produces the longest stays. Finish the listing, the photos and the rate calendar by early fall, keep ski weekends and holiday weeks at full price, require several nights on the busiest weeks, and state clearly which mountain a renter can ski on a Saturday.
July and October form two smaller tops. July has Holiday Valley's slopeside concerts and fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend, plus mountain biking and golf, and October has the Fall Festival in the village and the farm season in Great Valley, with October stays reserved earlier than those of any other month. Market summer and fall as products of their own, with a weekday rate, outdoor photos and festival-weekend offers, and save the ski weekends for groups.
The slow stretch runs from late March through May, with April the weakest month, and November stays slow until the lifts start turning. Spring is the time to service the hot tub and sauna, reshoot the deck and the summer gear, and offer last winter's guests next season's dates before anyone else. Midweek pricing, longer stays for people working remotely and a spring offer to Buffalo and Rochester families keep some nights booked.
On average guests reserve a bit more than two months out. October and December stays are booked earliest, nearly three months before arrival, and spring stays arrive closer to seven weeks ahead. Have the winter product finished by early fall, open the festival weekends early, and leave spring rates flexible for late planners.
A typical booking covers a long weekend or a few nights more. The holiday week at the end of December produces the longest stays, spring and early-summer visits run longer than ski weekends, and March and September bookings are the shortest, usually two or three nights.
What wins here is a house shaped for its guests: a chalet with four, five or more bedrooms a short drive from Holiday Valley's base lodges, showing its hot tub, sauna or fireplace early in the photos, or a village condo that sells the walk to dinner and the festivals. Listings that are exact about the guest count, the beds and which mountain renters can ski on weekends head off the complaints that drag reviews down. Great Valley country houses win by selling space, fire pits and the fall season rather than slope access.
Decide what you're selling first, a ski chalet near Holiday Valley, a village condo or a country house in Great Valley, and lead the title and photos with it. Price to the real calendar: firm rates for ski weekends and holiday weeks, separate offers for July, the Fall Festival and the fall farm season, and a guest count that matches the beds. Your own booking site and a complete Google listing let returning ski groups and Canadian families come back without a platform. Cavmir supplies that marketing work here, including photo direction, listing copy, direct-booking websites and local search.
The ski months are the peak: February earns the most, January comes close, and the holiday week at the end of December brings the longest stays. July is the best month outside the ski season, October holds up well with the Fall Festival, and April is the slowest month.
On average, a bit more than two months out. October and December stays are reserved earliest, nearly three months before arrival, and spring stays come in about seven weeks ahead. Get the winter listing ready by early fall and release festival weekends as early as you can.
Mostly from within driving range: Buffalo sends the most guests, then Rochester, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, and New York City leads the places further away. Canada is the main foreign source, Toronto ranks among the village's top cities, and HoliMont says many of its members are Canadian. Visitors who fly can use Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
Heat and water lead: a hot tub, a sauna and an indoor fireplace, and the houses that have them outearn the rest by a wide margin in the market data. Ski groups also want a real bed per adult, plenty of bathrooms and a plowed spot on the property for every car. A grill, an outdoor table and a fire pit sell the summer and the fall.
Run your Airbnb, Vrbo, or website through Cavmir's free grader. It checks the things that decide whether guests book in Ellicottville — photos, listing copy, page speed, local search — and shows you where bookings leak. Takes about a minute, and there's no sales call attached.
If the report says your booking engine is the weak link, that's fixable: a direct-booking website of your own means repeat guests stop paying platform fees to come back to you. That's the work Cavmir does — see Airbnb website design in Ellicottville.
Talk to Cavmir today. We'll show you exactly what your Ellicottville property is leaving on the table — and how fast we can change that.
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