Denver Live Cam

Greater Denver is a community of travelers, those who traveled here to live, those who travel here for vacations and, increasingly, those who travel here on business. It's a popular spot for conventions, and it's one of those places where the residents seldom have any trouble convincing people from other states to come and visit.

Lodging prices in the mountain resorts show amazing bargains in the off seasons of spring and fall, but Denver hotels, tending to be less vacation- and more commerce-oriented, don't show that much variation year round. As commercial hotels, however, they do tend to give much better rates on weekends than during the week, which is, of course, a boon for the working person who wants a weekend getaway.

Our listing rates hotels according to a three-symbol price key, representing average room cost per night during the week for a double occupancy.

The average room rate is not what you'll pay all the time, of course. Most hotels have a wide range of rates on any specific day, and, in addition to good weekend rates, most offer special package deals. Romantic weekend packages are popular with hotels, often lumping together such things as tickets and a limousine ride to a show, carriage rides or dinner at a local fine restaurant into a single price.

At the more moderately priced downtown hotels, you might want to check and see what kind of conventions they have going. We once stayed at a downtown Denver hotel with a convention of some teenage group, and there was running up and down the halls until close to midnight. Later, at 3 AM, the fire trucks came with sirens blaring because a youthful prankster had pulled a fire alarm.

The two biggest sources of hotel bookings are business, including conventions, and tourism. Business travelers stay in the greatest numbers at hotels in downtown Denver, the Denver Tech Center to the southeast and points in between. Tourists will generally stay anywhere they can get a good price, but near downtown is the preferred location for seeing "the sights" of Denver.

Valet service is a hallmark of the famed Brown Palace Hotel

If you're interested in seeing Rocky Mountain National Park and want Denver to be part of your trip, choose from the many lodgings on Denver's northwest quadrant. The near-east side of Denver is the most convenient place to stay if you're visiting the Denver Museum of Natural History, Colorado's second-most popular attraction. Lodgings on the west side of Denver provide the best access to Golden, the home of the Coors Brewery. The west side also allows for fast access to downtown and makes for a speedy mountain getaway via I-70. Sporting events are another big attraction, and the downtown or the near-west side are prime lodging locations for ready access to the Colorado Rockies at the new Coors Field, the Denver Broncos at Mile High Stadium or the Denver Nuggets at McNichols Sports Arena.

Big news for Denver is that hotels are finally going up around Denver International Airport. The first of them should be open by January of 1996, a Fairfield Inn by Marriott, part of a $1-billion Denver International Business Center planned along Tower Road between 64th and 72nd avenues, just a few miles from the terminal. A $70-million Westin Hotel has been announced, expected to open in 1997, right at the airport itself. Supposedly you'll be able to take an escalator from the terminal right into the hotel. Also slated for a 1997 opening is a 200-room Courtyard by Marriott, just north of the Fairfield Inn by Marriott.

The U.S. Travel Data Center in Washington, D.C., tells us that we get about 13 million "pleasure trips" from out of state each year, but the Denver firm of Browne Bortz and Coddington estimates about 7 million actual tourists per year, the largest segment of that being people coming to visit friends and relatives. If they're not crashing on the living room floor, a large percentage of them are staying in Greater Denver hotels and seeing the local sights. Not everybody is in love with the great outdoors.

Tourists spend more than $6 billion here each year, and about half of that amount is associated with the ski industry. We get more tourists in the summer, but skiers are bigger spenders. On the other hand, skiers do most of their skiing in the mountains, tending to hop the first rental car or resort shuttle they can catch out of town. So for the skiers, for attendees at the many conferences held at mountain resort areas, and for all those who want a place to stay in the mountains in the summer, we need to point out that you don't have to do much touch-tone punching to find lodgings.

Besides calling the toll-free reservations number listed above for the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, you can call a central reservations number at every major resort for help with prices and availability. See the Ski Country chapter in this book. Also consult the gray pages of the Denver phone book.

The Tabor Center is also home to the Westin Hotel

Hotels in the southeastern part of Greater Denver, especially around the Denver Tech Center area, seem far from the new Denver International Airport northeast of the city. But they're actually closer in terms of time and traffic than many more central areas, thanks to I-225 that runs up the east side of the metro area to connect with I-70. Hotels in that area are also closer than it would seem to the mountains via I-70, thanks to C-470, the completed southwest quadrant of Denver's future beltway. C-470 offers a low-traffic highway across the south side of Greater Denver, curving up along the edge of the Foothills to meet I-70 west near Golden. It's a faster and less nerve-wracking route than you would otherwise take from the southern half of Greater Denver, which requires you to travel I-25 through the most congested parts of the city before you reach I-70.

A lot of hotels have free continental breakfast, free transportation, free newspapers delivered to your door, free attached parking, free or discounted access to a nearby athletic club, free free free. In most of our listings, we haven't detailed all the frees, but do make a point of asking when you check in. Sometimes they may forget to tell you that you don't need to buy breakfast in the morning. All hotels, bed and breakfasts, and hostels in this listing accept credit cards.

One fact that you may not notice in looking for a hotel, but of which you should be aware to save yourself confusion and possible grief, is that many Englewood addresses are not in Englewood. For some perverse reason, the post office lists many addresses around the Denver Tech Center as being Englewood addresses, even though Englewood is a good 5 miles to the northwest. We've noted this up-front in each such listing.

There are some who don't care for the bed and breakfast experience; they want a modern room, a pool, a restaurant, a gift shop and a lobby. But others enjoy the charm, personal touch, intimacy and the often historic surroundings of a bed and breakfast inn. Greater Denver has such inns that compare with the best anywhere.

If you want a more complete exposition on bed and breakfasts up and down the Front Range and throughout the rest of Colorado, the Bed & Breakfast Innkeepers of Colorado has more than 100 inspected and approved establishments in its listings for the state.

In the use of our price-key symbols ($, $$ or $$$), representing double occupancy during the week, we've tried to represent an average price of accommodations for each bed and breakfast inn, but remember that the inns often have a limited number of rooms at widely varying price ranges. All of the bed and breakfasts in our listing accept credit cards, and none of them accept pets. None of them will turn away people with children, but in some cases as indicated, children may be difficult to accommodate due to limits on the number of people allowed in rooms or the inability to add an extra bed to rooms.

Hostels are for the truly cost-conscious traveler who is not looking for frills or even a bathroom in the room. If you're traveling on a budget and love an offbeat atmosphere and what might seem like bohemian accommodations to the folks at the Westin and the Hyatt, there's nothing like that special camaraderie that prevails in the hostel environment.

They used to call these things "youth hostels," because older folks tended to think they were OK for kids but declassé for adults, or that they were just plain dives for hippies and the down-and-out. Now, in a more enlightened era, we know that all ages can enjoy the hostel experience. OK, hostels sometimes look from the outside like flop houses, and they're sometimes in seedier parts of town. Then again, some of them are unexpectedly attractive. One thing for sure is they tend to be close to the center of town, with prices that allow you to stay for a week on what would be one night's price at a reasonably fancy hotel. Our price key, explained in the beginning of the chapter, doesn't really tell you how cheap they are, because prices for the following hostels range as low as $8.50 per night. Denver has several choice venues for the hosteler.

You can get the full scoop on hostels in the Denver area and the rest of Colorado by calling American Youth Hostels-Hostelling International, for anywhere in the United States. There's also a Boulder number, that's good for Colorado hostels. We've listed below the downtown Denver possibilities. Hostels listed below all accept major credit cards but no personal checks. There are no age restrictions on occupants, except that people younger than 18 cannot check in without a parent or guardian.