Looking for a Denver hotel room for 4/20 weekend? You're not alone. Hotel searches for Denver rooms that weekend are up more than 70 percent from last year, according to hotels.com. (Kyle Wagner, The Denver Post)

Denver hotel searches for 4/20 weekend are up 73 percent, says lodging giant

Published: • Updated:

By , The Cannabist Staff

Denver, prepare yourself for what could be one of the largest surges of marijuana-based tourism ever seen.

Next weekend’s plethora of 4/20 events — from the largest-ever Cannabis Cup to concerts featuring Snoop Dogg, Cheech & Chong, Slightly Stoopid, Matisyahu, Leftover Salmon, Wyclef Jean, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Ice Cube, Julian Marley, KISS Army, Talib Kweli, Paper Diamond, Tauntaun, B Real (of Cypress Hill), Method Man/Redman and many others — is sure to draw record crowds on this first stoner holiday after legal sales began in the modern American world. One Internet lodging giant released statistics on April 11 saying that the metro area is seeing a massive, 70-plus percent year-over-year jump in booking searches in 2014.

Don’t forget about the record air traffic at DIA: January 2014 was the biggest January in Denver International Airport’s 19-year history.

Denver searches made Jan. 1-March 27 for lodging on the weekend of April 18-20, 2014 on Hotels.com are up 73 percent over the same period in 2013. Colorado searches are up 78 percent using the same metrics, the company said.

It’s only one company’s data, sure, but that company is a behemoth — and they seem certain their data spike is a result of legal recreational marijuana sales, which started throughout Colorado on Jan. 1, 2014.

“Denver is a perennial Top 20 U.S. destination for Americans based on total bookings, but now what we’re seeing in the first quarter of the year is that even more people are looking to visit,” said Taylor Cole, director of public relations for Hotels.com. “The overall search increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including the law change, but our search data indicates that significantly more people are visiting Denver next weekend due to the local events and festivities that are planned.”

Don’t leave leftover weed as a housekeeping tip: Yes, somebody tried it. And yes, they were fined for in-room smoking, even though they claim they didn’t smoke inside the room.

The company’s data shows that it’s not only 4/20 that has seen an uptick in hotel searches locally. Denver searches made on the site during the same period (Jan. 1-March 27, 2014) for check in anytime are up 25 percent from the previous year — and 7 percent for Colorado searches. These stats are less conclusive than the 4/20-specific numbers, because January hosted a couple high-profile Broncos playoff games and the whole winter has seen better-than-average snow at the ski resorts throughout the Rocky Mountains.