After hours spent crawling up the westbound lanes of I-70 from Denver through the Eisenhower Tunnel and over the pass, you arrive in Vail Village, on the morning of a big event only to find all the parking structures are full and, ditto with the overflow spots along Frontage Road. Not to worry, because you’ve reserved a designated space with Edwards-based startup Spotsurfer. 

“We’re a parking solutions company,” says Ben Douglas Ray, SpotSurfer’s vice president of business development and digital marketing. As Ray tells it, after graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2022, founder James Hohenlohe regularly noticed that there was more traffic on the roads to the mountains than parking spaces available; he started seeing the empty driveways of vacation homes and parking lots of hotels as an untapped business opportunity. Spotsurfer encourages property owners to rent their unused spaces to motorists willing to pay a premium for a guaranteed place to park—crowds be damned. 

“It’s very simple,” explains Ray. “It’s a marketplace exchange in a sharing economy. Our customers say we’re the Airbnb of parking.”

So how does it all work? Ray spends a lot of time finding empty spots by developing relationships with local places like the Tivoli Hotel, the Sitzmark, and even the Vail Daily, where, post-pandemic, the parking lot is rarely full. “Say a business has 40 spaces. Our proposition is if you’re at 60 percent capacity, we want to help get you to 100 percent,” Ray explains. “Sign on with us so we can send people your way. It’s a 50/50 split revenue share and we handle the reservations, payment, and management.” Similarly, a homeowner with unoccupied space in a garage or driveway (and verified home insurance) can reach out to Spotsurfer and register as a vendor. At press time, the company had more than 450 rentable parking spots in 15 Colorado resort communities (including Avon, Eagle, Edwards, and Vail), with plans to expand to ski towns in Utah and California.

From the consumer side, it’s as easy as downloading the Spotsurfer app, creating a profile with a method of payment, searching available spots, and making a reservation up to six months in advance; your card won’t be charged until the day before your booking. And here’s the best insurance policy of all for Denverites: Ray says, “If the Eisenhower Tunnel is closed, I’ll refund you.”   

Depending on location, fees range from $15 to $75 per parking session and, since the app is geared for short-term visits only, overnight parking isn’t allowed. Also, parkers must abide by rules. Those lax in returning to their cars on time could be booted and if you leave a mess behind (empty beer cans, trash, etc.), you will be barred from the app and forced to spin your wheels in frustration, like all the other drivers out there jockeying for a space.