Ellicottville Tourism Data: Visitor Demand vs Occupancy

Independent hosts marketing an Ellicottville, New York listing sit next to two ski mountains and one confusing jurisdictional split. Holiday Valley, at 6557 Holiday Valley Road, and its smaller neighbor Holi Mont are the reason most out-of-town searchers type "Ellicottville" in the first place, but neither mountain's lift line tells a host whether a specific driveway is legally allowed to rent, or whether it actually filled last February. The Town of Ellicottville and the incorporated Village of Ellicottville, both inside Cattaraugus County, run separate rule sets, and listing copy that treats "Ellicottville" as one flat jurisdiction is already wrong before it gets anywhere near seasonality.

This page works from one published dataset covering the trailing year, August 2025 through July 2026, across the 58 active short-term rental listings inside Town and Village limits. It does not estimate a lift-ticket-to-booking conversion rate, does not rank Ellicottville against other ski-adjacent towns, and does not turn a festival weekend into a revenue projection. This is not legal advice - a specific permit or zoning question belongs with Town Desk or the Village Clerk, not with a market-data page.

Fifty-Eight Listings Is a Small, Split Market

The active Ellicottville short-term rental count sits at 58 listings across the combined Town and Village. That is small enough that one property manager's calendar decisions, or even a handful of new listings coming online, can move the visible average meaningfully - a host cannot assume this market behaves like a resort town with ten times the supply.

Fifty-eight listings also means the two jurisdictions layered inside that number - Town and Village - do not each get their own clean, separately reported sample. A host has to independently confirm which one their parcel actually sits in before quoting either set of rules to a curious guest or a skeptical buyer.

Typical performance across that full pool, for the trailing year, lands at $26,763 in annual revenue, an ADR of $388, occupancy of 30.1 percent, and RevPAR of $124. Those four numbers describe one town's entire calendar - ski season, mud season, summer, and the shoulder weeks around each - averaged together into a single line. A two-bedroom near the base is not automatically at that number, and a studio five miles out on a quiet road is not automatically below it; this is the published baseline, not a promise for any one address.

Holiday Valley and Holi Mont Are Not the Same Draw

Holiday Valley, at 6557 Holiday Valley Road, is the resort most guests mean when they search Ellicottville - it is the larger of the two ski areas, and the name that shows up first in most out-of-town searches. Holi Mont sits closer to the village center, runs a lower price point, and pulls a different trip entirely: shorter runs, more day-trip skiers, fewer guests booking a full week around it.

A listing that only names "the ski resort" without picking one is leaving out the exact detail that tells a guest what kind of trip they are actually buying. "Steps from Holiday Valley" and "a short drive to Holi Mont" describe two different guests, two different price expectations, and two different lengths of stay.

Neither mountain's lift traffic is occupancy. A packed parking lot at Holiday Valley on a Saturday says demand exists in town that day; it says nothing about whether a specific rental five minutes away is booked, priced correctly, or even listed with current photos. A host leaning on proximity language should be able to back it with an actual drive time, not a marketing gloss borrowed from the resort's own site.

The Town and the Village Do Not Share One Rulebook

Ellicottville is legally two governments layered onto one place name: the Town of Ellicottville and the incorporated Village of Ellicottville, both inside Cattaraugus County. Town Desk answers at (716) 699-2240; the Village Clerk answers separately at (716) 699-4636. These are not two phone numbers for the same office - they are two different governing bodies with the authority to set different rules for parcels that, on a map, might sit a block apart.

A short-term rental inside the Village limits is not automatically governed the same way as one in the surrounding Town, and a host who has only ever called one of those two desks may be operating on rules that never actually applied to their address. This is not legal advice, and any specific permit, occupancy, or zoning question should go directly to whichever office - Town or Village - actually has jurisdiction over the parcel in question, confirmed by address rather than assumed from a neighbor's experience.

Fall Festival Is a Two-Day Weekend, Not a Season

Ellicottville's Fall Festival runs October 10 and 11, 2026 - a two-day event with a fixed date, not an extended foliage season a host can stretch pricing across. It is real, dated demand a host can plan a calendar around and price toward with genuine confidence, because the date is published rather than estimated from a typical fall pattern in the Northeast.

What the festival is not is a stand-in for the whole of October, and a listing description that implies festival-level crowds for every October weekend is claiming more than two specific days actually support. The pack's named peak months for Ellicottville are July, January, and February - a ski-and-summer pattern first, with the Fall Festival functioning as a short, real spike layered on top rather than a third full season of its own.

Summer Live Music Lines Up With the Peak, It Does Not Create It

July shows up as a named peak month in the published data, and it is also when Ellicottville's summer outdoor-event and live-music calendar runs heaviest. That alignment is genuinely useful - a host can price July with real confidence that the ski-town baseline and the warm-weather event calendar are both pulling the same direction at once.

It is also easy to overstate. A single evening's concert crowd downtown does not extend a peak month into a peak season, and listing copy that promises "concert season" across the entire summer is claiming more than the underlying data can support. What a host can say honestly is that July performs, and it performs for more than one reason at the same time. What a host should not say is that live music alone is driving that month's occupancy, when the ski-town's general summer draw is doing most of the real work.

Keep Regional Visitor Spending Off Your Listing's ADR

Cattaraugus County and the wider Western New York tourism apparatus publish regional visitor-spending figures covering a footprint far larger than 58 Ellicottville listings. A county- or region-wide spending total, including Buffalo-area visitor numbers, is not an Ellicottville figure, and it is nowhere close to being any single listing's ADR or occupancy rate.

Hosts sometimes see a large regional tourism-spend number in a chamber press release and assume it implies strong individual-listing pricing power; it does not, because that total folds in day-trippers, restaurant spend, gas station receipts, and every hotel room in the county alongside the handful of short-term rentals inside Town and Village limits. If a number cannot be traced back to the Ellicottville-specific short-term rental dataset, it does not belong in a listing description or a pricing decision - keep the two categories on separate, clearly labeled lines the way the underlying data already keeps them.

58 Listings Do Not Split Evenly Between Town and Village

Because the published dataset reports Ellicottville as one combined 58-listing pool, it does not tell a host how many of those listings sit inside the Village versus the surrounding Town - that split has to come from the actual jurisdiction desks, not from the market data. A host assuming an even split, or assuming their own listing's performance reflects "the Village number" specifically, is reading more precision into the dataset than it actually contains.

This matters most when a host is trying to benchmark against a specific competitor set. A property inside the Village, walking distance to downtown shops and restaurants, competes on different terms than a Town property with more land and less walkability - even though both show up inside the same $26,763 average. Treat the combined figure as a starting point for the whole market, then adjust expectations based on which side of the Town/Village line your own listing actually sits on.

How a Host Should Actually Use This Data

The useful move with a dataset like this is narrow, not broad: pull the specific number that applies to your specific decision, and leave the rest exactly where it sits. $26,763 in typical annual revenue tells a host what a full-year average listing earns across the whole 58-listing pool - useful for a pricing sanity check, not a guarantee for any one address. July as a peak month tells a host when to raise rates with confidence; October 10-11 tells a host exactly which weekend to block for festival-level demand.

What none of it answers is whether a specific renovation will move ADR, whether more reviews change conversion, or whether a specific guest books. Those remain operating decisions a host makes from their own calendar and their own listing history - not something a published market average can settle for them.

Related Reading

More Ellicottville, New York reading already live on Crest & Cove.

• Ellicottville STR Report 2026: $26,763 on 58 listings

• Market an Ellicottville Stay: Ski, July, Not Buffalo

• Ellicottville STR Rules: Town Desk, Village, 375 Cap

• Ellicottville Shoulder Season: January Peak, March Hole

• Ellicottville Remote Stays: Seven listings Set 30-Plus

• DIY vs Hire in Ellicottville: EVL, Not Realty listing stock

• Who Books an Ellicottville Rental: Ski Week, July Walk

• Buying an Ellicottville Rental: $26,763, Not Inspector T12

• Complete Visitor's Guide to Ellicottville, New York

• What It Costs to Start a Legal Ellicottville NY STR

• Financing an Ellicottville Rental Without a Costume Year

• Ellicottville Town vs Village: Two STR clerk's offices

• Does an Ellicottville STR Permit Transfer on a Sale

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the actual short-term rental count in Ellicottville right now?

58 active listings across the combined Town and Village of Ellicottville, based on the trailing-year dataset covering August 2025 through July 2026. That is small enough that individual property managers and even single calendar decisions can move the visible average meaningfully, so a host should treat any one published number - occupancy, ADR, or revenue - as a market-wide baseline, not a guarantee for a specific address.

How much does a typical Ellicottville short-term rental earn in a year?

The published baseline for the trailing year is $26,763 in annual revenue, with an ADR of $388, occupancy of 30.1 percent, and RevPAR of $124, across the 58-listing pool. That figure averages ski season, mud season, and summer together; a listing closer to Holiday Valley or with more bedrooms will typically sit above it, and a smaller or more remote listing will typically sit below it.

Are Holiday Valley and Holi Mont the same resort?

No. Holiday Valley, at 6557 Holiday Valley Road, is the larger of the two and the name most out-of-town guests search for; Holi Mont sits closer to the village center and tends to draw day-trip skiers rather than week-long guests. Listing copy should name whichever mountain is actually nearer and relevant, rather than treating "the ski resort" as one interchangeable landmark.

Do the Town and Village of Ellicottville share the same short-term rental rules?

No, and this distinction matters more than most hosts assume. The Town and the incorporated Village are separate governments inside Cattaraugus County, reachable at (716) 699-2240 and (716) 699-4636 respectively, and a parcel's applicable rules depend on which jurisdiction it actually sits in. This is not legal advice - confirm the rule set with whichever desk has jurisdiction over your specific address before advertising or pricing a listing.

Is the Fall Festival a good reason to raise rates for all of October?

Only for the actual festival weekend. Ellicottville's Fall Festival runs October 10 and 11, 2026 - two specific, published days - and pricing those nights with confidence is reasonable. Extending festival-level pricing across the whole month assumes demand the data does not show; the pack's named peak months are July, January, and February, not a full autumn season.

Should a host use Buffalo or Western New York regional tourism-spending numbers in their marketing?

No. Regional visitor-spending totals cover a footprint far larger than the 58 listings inside Ellicottville's Town and Village limits, and they fold in restaurant, fuel, and day-trip spend that has nothing to do with any one short-term rental's ADR or occupancy. Keep regional tourism figures and this specific rental market's published performance on separate lines rather than blending them into one pitch.

Does July's peak-month status mean summer concerts are driving Ellicottville's bookings?

Partly, but not primarily. July is a named peak month in the published data, and it does line up with the town's heaviest summer live-music and event calendar - but ski-town infrastructure and general Western New York summer travel are the larger forces behind that month's performance. A single concert night is not the reason a whole month performs well.

Does the $26,763 figure tell me how many listings are in the Village versus the Town?

No. The published dataset reports Ellicottville as one combined 58-listing pool and does not break the Town/Village split out separately. A host wanting that specific breakdown needs to confirm it directly with Town Hall or the Village Clerk rather than inferring it from the market figures.

What should an Ellicottville host actually change on their listing after reading this?

Name the correct mountain - Holiday Valley or Holi Mont, whichever genuinely applies - confirm which jurisdiction your parcel sits in and note it for compliance questions, price the July peak and the October 10-11 festival weekend with real confidence, and leave regional tourism-spend numbers out of the listing description entirely. Each of those is a specific, sourced edit, not a general tone change.

Who should a host call with a specific Ellicottville zoning or permit question?

Whichever office has jurisdiction over the parcel: Town Hall at (716) 699-2240 for a Town property, or the Village Clerk at (716) 699-4636 for a Village property. This page is not legal advice, and neither desk's answer should be assumed to apply to a parcel governed by the other.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

A published year of Ellicottville data says 58 listings, $26,763 typical revenue, and two mountains that are not interchangeable. Most listing copy here still blurs those facts into one generic ski-town pitch.

We rebuild Ellicottville listings around the trailing-year dataset instead of borrowed resort language, matching every claim to the mountain, jurisdiction, and month it actually describes. Send us your current listing draft and we will flag every unsupported line before it goes back live.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.