How to Create a 5-Star Guest Experience for the 2027 Sundance Film Festival

Renting your home during the 2027 Sundance Film Festival is an exciting opportunity, but it comes with a level of expectation that most first-time hosts underestimate. In a recent Fox Property Management webinar, founder Jennifer Fox and short-term rental director Ross sat down to talk through what it actually takes to deliver a guest experience worthy of a global film festival. Whether you're self-managing or working with a property manager for festival rentals, here's what you need to know.

Know Who's Coming

Hospitality starts with understanding your guest, and for Sundance Film Festival, that picture is more layered than you might expect.

Attendees are arriving in waves. First come the corporate teams: Netflix, production companies, brand sponsors, and festival organizers who have been planning their Boulder stay for months. These are high-expectation guests with real spending power who have been attending Sundance in Park City for years and know exactly what premium festival lodging looks and feels like.

Then come the filmmakers, vendors, and industry professionals. These are the people who are there because their work is there. They mean business, and they’ll likely be the teams who return to their choice rental house year after year. After them, the enthusiasts: people who travel specifically for the festival every year. Again, it’s likely these people are going to find a single-family home rental in Boulder and stick to it. And finally, the last-minute invitees who show up with little notice and high expectations.

What unites all of them is that they are not budget travelers. They are paying premium nightly rates, and they expect every part of their experience, including where they sleep, to feel elevated, intentional, and personal.

Raise Your Standards to Match the Rate

One of the most important points to note from a property manager for festival rentals is really just simple human psychology: the more someone pays, the higher their expectations. A guest paying $100 a night extends a lot of grace. A guest paying $1,000 a night does not.

Many Boulder homeowners will be renting their properties for the first time during the festival. That's not a problem, but it does mean that the learning curve needs to happen before guests arrive, not during their stay. A broken bed frame, no coffee, a parking dispute left unresolved, these are small details in isolation. Together, they create a narrative. Once a guest starts looking for problems, they find them. And a two-star review from a first-time hosting experience can effectively end your ability to rent again.

This is one of the core reasons homeowners choose to work with an experienced property manager for festival rentals rather than self-manage: the standards, systems, and responsiveness are already in place before the first guest walks through the door.

Think Like a Hospitality Company, Not a Homeowner

Jennifer's philosophy at Fox Property Management is that we are a hospitality company that manages properties, not the other way around. That distinction changes how you see your guest. Instead of a transaction, it becomes a relationship. Instead of handing over keys and leaving, it becomes a curated experience.

In our recent webinar, Ross shared a story from his own early Airbnb days renting his home while on vacation, charging a fair rate, and figuring things out as he went. Guests gave him grace because the value was there. That grace disappears at festival pricing. The bar is just different, and that’s ok! With Fox, you’ll be ready.

The framework Fox recommends comes from Unreasonable Hospitality by restaurateur Will Guidara, who took Eleven Madison Park to the number one restaurant in the world. His core philosophy: listen, then take action. Some of the most meaningful hospitality gestures cost nothing. Others cost a little. All of them make guests feel seen.

Listen and Personalize 

When a guest books your property, they often share more than just their dates. They mention why they're coming, what they're excited about, what they're hoping to do. That information is a gift.

Jennifer's team once spotted CU-branded prosecco bottles at a liquor store and bought fifteen of them for all their graduation-weekend stays. A small, thoughtful detail, but one that told guests the moment they walked in: the host knows why we're here. For Sundance Film Festival, you already know why people are coming. The question is how you use that knowledge.

If a guest mentions they want to hike while they're in town, leave a printed trail map in their welcome packet. Add a set of boot spikes for winter hiking. If they're part of a corporate team that needs to get up to Eldora, consider arranging a shuttle and absorbing part of the cost. At $500 to $1,500 a night, a $100 gesture toward their experience is not an expense; it's an investment in a guest who might return to your home for the next ten years.

A dedicated property manager for festival rentals will often handle this layer of personalization on your behalf — paying attention to guest communications, curating welcome details, and ensuring the experience feels tailored rather than generic.

Welcome Baskets: Match the Investment to the Rate

Fox includes welcome baskets at every property we manage, long-term, mid-term, and short-term alike. It's a non-negotiable expression of hospitality. But for the festival, the welcome basket needs to match the occasion.

A $15 basket with a bottle of Two Buck Chuck tells a guest exactly how much thought went into their arrival. At premium festival rates, that lands poorly. Think about what it feels like to walk into a beautifully prepared space and find something genuinely thoughtful waiting for you: quality wine or spirits, local products, something specific to why they're there. It doesn't need to be extravagant. It needs to feel intentional.

Tip: A good rule of thumb, if you're earning $500 a night, invest in a nicer welcome. If you're earning $1,500 a night, spoil them a little.

Responsiveness Is Non-Negotiable

All the personal touches in the world don't matter if a guest can't reach you. Responsiveness is the foundation of a good hosting experience, and the fastest way to destroy one.

A frozen keypad at 11:30 PM. A car in the parking spot with no one to call. A Wi-Fi issue that goes unanswered for a day. These are not catastrophes on their own. But when a guest is paying premium rates and can't get a response, the experience deteriorates quickly, and the review reflects it.

If you're self-managing and planning to be out of state or out of the country during the festival, you need a plan for 24/7 responsiveness before your guest arrives. For many homeowners, partnering with a property manager for festival rentals is the most practical solution: someone is monitoring communications, handling issues in real time, and ensuring guests feel supported throughout their stay without the homeowner needing to be on-call around the clock.

Think of Your Home as a Business

The most useful mindset shift for first-time Sundance Film Festival short-term rental hosts is to stop thinking like a homeowner and start thinking like a business owner. Your property, during those 29 days, is a hospitality business. That means upfront investment in preparation, time spent on communication, and a genuine commitment to delivering a quality experience.

Ross put it simply: you may not make a windfall in year one. But if you do it well in year one, you have the reviews, the reputation, and the relationships to make the next nine years of Sundance income nearly effortless. A guest who loves where they stayed does not want to search for a new place next year. They want to come back to yours.

That is the real ROI of doing this right the first time.

It's Bigger Than Your Property

It’s clear that this conversation extends beyond individual homeowners. Sundance Film Festival in Boulder is projected to bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy. Every business, every restaurant, every rideshare driver, every homeowner is a piece of that experience.

Visit Boulder has framed it well: host with heart. That's not just about your welcome basket or your hiking map. It's about the entire city showing up for this moment with intention and care. Lodging is where guests spend their mornings and their evenings, the beginning and end of every festival day. If that experience is excellent, guests leave Boulder talking about how incredible the festival was. If it falls short, no amount of great programming makes up for it. The goal is to be the referee nobody noticed, because everything just worked.

Working With a Property Manager for Festival Rentals

For homeowners who want to participate in the Sundance Film Festival opportunity without taking on the full weight of self-management, working with an experienced property manager for festival rentals provides a meaningful advantage. From preparing your property and curating the guest experience to handling all communications and post-stay care, the right management partner ensures your home performs at the level the market demands and that your reputation is protected for years to come.

Fox Property Management is a vetted Visit Boulder partner with direct relationships with sponsor teams and corporate groups. We handle the details, so you don't have to.

Whether you're self-managing or ready to explore professional property management, the principles are the same: prepare your property properly, price it in a way that still delivers value, communicate proactively, personalize where you can, and be responsive throughout the stay.