Prepare yourself: Your rented winter vacation home may not be available after all

It’s no longer surprising when the pandemic throws a wrench in your plans. In fact, I'm often pleasantly surprised when anything more complex than boiling pasta goes smoothly.

As we face another serious surge in COVID-19 cases, any travel plans you made a few months ago, during a seemingly stable time, are now... at risk. With increased stay-at-home orders, new testing and quarantine restrictions, and potential hotel closures (or delays in reopening), there's a lot that could go wrong.

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However, the current concern specifically revolves around vacation home rentals that might become unavailable as various regions reintroduce stricter lockdown measures. In March, we witnessed many locations temporarily prohibiting short-term vacation rentals to bolster shelter-at-home efforts.

Months later, vacation home rentals are mostly available again—but there’s a significant caveat. As winter approaches, even a house designed for 22 guests may only be rented by one household.

Large ski houses in Colorado can only accommodate 1 household

This issue isn't confined to Colorado; we also see similar limitations in California. With ski season and Colorado's restrictions coinciding, winter trips to Colorado could be heavily affected.

If your travel group opted for whole-home rentals to enjoy more privacy than hotel rooms provide, your ideal ski home reservations may be caught in the crosshairs as Colorado aims to curb rising COVID-19 cases.

In Colorado, counties are assigned a color code from green (good) to purple (very, very bad) based on new case numbers, the percentage of positive tests, and the effect on hospitalization rates. Currently, no county is in the green category, only one is at the second-best blue level, while most are at the unfavorable orange or red levels.

This is significant for home rentals because once a county reaches the red (second-worst) COVID-19 classification, short-term rentals can only be occupied by one household. It's important to note that this refers to one actual household sharing the same physical address, not just one "family" (which includes siblings, cousins, grandparents, etc.).

Several key ski counties, including Summit (home to Keystone, Breckenridge, etc.), San Miguel (home to Telluride), and Clear Creek (home to Loveland), have already reached the red level.

The popular ski counties of Eagle (Vail, Beaver Creek) and Pitkin (Aspen) are just one step below at the orange level. Even at this orange designation, social gatherings—including sharing home rentals—are technically restricted to no more than 10 people from a maximum of two households.

Essentially, this means that if your group purchased ski passes and intended to share that spacious six-bedroom rental in a Colorado county that has now reached the red designation (or will before your travel date), sharing that rental is not legally permitted, even if everyone has quarantined prior to travel and taken COVID-19 tests.

Winter travel plans now uncertain

For me, this isn’t merely a hypothetical issue.

We have a ski rental home reserved in Telluride for later this winter, which is still a few months away.

The plan was to share the house with a small number of family members outside our household. Thanks to pre-travel testing and careful planning, we've managed to take a few trips this year where we shared a rental with our travel bubble. While there is still some risk involved, getting the kids out on the snow this winter seemed like a fun, distanced, outdoor activity.

However, after San Miguel County in Telluride entered red restrictions last week, the homeowner contacted me to confirm that only one household would be staying in the rental. Unfortunately, this large multi-bedroom home, which rents for about $1,000 per night during ski season, was intended for use by more than one household.

Hopefully, the situation in the Telluride area will improve before our travel dates. But as it stands, our options are: Keep the rental just for my family of four and pay $1,000 per night for an excessively large home (leaving other family members to find their own accommodations), hope for improvements later in the ski season, or cancel now.

The owner of this particular rental is willing to issue a refund due to the new occupancy restrictions. However, that doesn't mean that all related expenses (like ski passes) are refundable. In fact, they are not.

The bottom line

I’ve canceled several upcoming trips simply because the rise in cases makes those near-term plans feel imprudent, but I still held out hope for an outdoor-focused trip several months down the line.

While I haven't completely abandoned the idea of safely enjoying the mountains this winter, figuring out how to make that happen has become a more complex challenge. Extended family could opt for multiple ski-friendly hotel rooms, but with less space and often no kitchen, that creates new issues of its own.

Given the time it takes for a county to shift to less-restrictive classifications and current trends, it seems highly likely that some Colorado counties will remain in the red zone as we approach the peak winter holiday weeks.

Those with shared home rental reservations in affected counties during that period may need to find alternative arrangements to comply with public health orders. Travelers with potentially impacted bookings later in the winter might still consider a wait-and-see approach—while crossing their ski mittens that the severe effects of COVID-19 start to improve quickly.

However, this situation is not exclusive to Colorado, so it’s important to stay informed about local regulations wherever you plan to rent a vacation home in the future.