Durango-La Plata County Airport recently announced that daily parking rates will temporarily increase from $9 to $14 during the Thanksgiving holidays. We have received some negative feedback about this decision, and I would like to provide additional context about why the airport made it, as well as how we are managing the growing demand for parking at DRO overall.
Thanksgiving is the busiest period for vehicle parking demand at DRO. While the airport sees its highest overall demand during the summer and early fall, use by local residents (and the resulting parked vehicles) surges during the holidays as many of us travel to see family outside the area. Vehicle parking demand over Thanksgiving is 30% higher than at any other time of year, creating an acute capacity challenge during just one week.
During the Thanksgiving holiday in 2024, we nearly ran out of parking spaces. The airport parked nearly 300 vehicles, exceeding our standard capacity. To handle this overflow, we operated a remote shuttle lot for the first time in the airport’s history, and also guided vehicles to creative parking locations in our cellphone waiting lot and along airport roads. The airport added 150 new permanent paved parking spaces in 2025 and will again operate the remote shuttle lot for Thanksgiving. Still, we are nearing a point of overwhelming demand for parking spaces during this holiday period. DRO has more parking spaces per passenger than every comparable regional airport we’ve reached out to, and yet it’s still not enough during the Thanksgiving holiday.
The primary goal of temporarily raising prices is not to generate revenue. It is to manage congestion by encouraging the use of alternative transportation options, such as family and friend pickups and drop-offs, carpooling, and local ground transportation services. Raising prices temporarily is the most effective way to accomplish this. Higher prices discourage the default decision to take a personal vehicle to the airport, an action we need to limit during overflow conditions.
We are quite aware that the added cost of surge pricing for parking during the holidays doesn’t feel very festive, but we face the very real possibility of completely running out of parking for the public if we don’t find a way to encourage alternative transportation. While higher cost parking does present a challenge, an even bigger challenge would be turning around vehicles because the airport no longer has a safe location to park them.
DRO is not alone in facing parking challenges during the holidays. Denver International Airport publicly announced that all on-site overnight parking was full during last year’s Thanksgiving holiday, underscoring that even the largest airports in the country struggle to manage the intense holiday demand. If an airport were to build sufficient parking spaces to handle this one annual surge event, they would sit empty 95% of the time, making them a poor investment and inefficient use of finite space.
The public must understand that DRO does have sufficient parking on a day-to-day basis. Our 1,304 current parking spaces can meet demand nearly every day of the year (except Thanksgiving).
As our passenger traffic has grown, we have also been expanding parking capacity. A total of 242 new parking spaces have been built since 2022, at a cost of more than $3 million to the airport. We have a series of parking expansion projects in our capital plans, with the potential to add 200 to 300 additional spaces in the next few years. We are also evaluating alternative options such as expanded remote parking lot operations and new pricing strategies. With any of these options, our goal will be to find the best balance between capacity and affordability, for both the airport and our users.
As always, we thank our community for selecting DRO for their air travel needs. Our dedicated staff members work hard to make your travel experience as smooth as possible, and we hope that you and your family enjoy a safe and happy holiday.
Tony Vicari is aviation director for Durango-La Plata County Airport (DRO).
