JoAnn Kirkland has spent much of her life in ski towns. Now, after more than 15 years in the industry, she’s studying how those communities are changing with the rise of short-term rentals in mountain towns like Park City.
“I wanted to do something that was timely and that really impacts the tourism sector right now,” Kirkland said. “Short-term rentals are such a hot topic everywhere, but when I started digging, there was surprisingly little research focused specifically on North American ski resorts.”
Kirkland is a doctoral candidate at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh School of Business, where she is completing a Doctorate in Business Administration with a focus on responsible tourism. Though her interest in ski towns predates her dissertation by decades.
She grew up skiing in Alberta, Canada, raced competitively, became an instructor and later built a career in hospitality and destination development that took her to places like Whistler, British Columbia; Telluride, Colorado; and Aspen, Colorado.
“I’ve lived and worked in ski resorts for a large part of my life,” she said. “I really understand the nuances of these communities, how connected they are to tourism, how fragile they can be and how much change can impact day-to-day life.”
Kirkland said she was motivated by what she saw as a gap in the research. Most studies on short-term rentals focus on urban centers, while ski resorts with their seasonal economies, tight housing supply and reliance on tourism have largely been left out.
“Ski resorts are seasonal, environmentally sensitive and often have housing concentrated right at the base of the mountain,” she said. “What works or doesn’t in a city doesn’t always translate cleanly to a resort community.”
Her research looks at short-term rentals through social, economic and environmental lenses, using the case studies across the different ski towns of North America to compare how each chooses to regulate them.
On the social side, she’s looking at community identity, neighborhood cohesion, quality of life and issues like noise, traffic and safety. Economically, she’s exploring both the benefits, such as additional income for homeowners and expanded visitor capacity, and the pressures, including workforce housing constraints. From an environmental perspective, she’s examining how much growth ski towns can handle and how increased visitation affects infrastructure and the surrounding environment.
“You can’t stop progress,” Kirkland said. “Short-term rentals are part of how tourism has evolved. The real question is how do you manage them responsibly so the positives are leveraged and the negatives are mitigated?”
Kirkland is gathering perspectives from across the ecosystem of municipal officials, tourism authorities, business owners and rental hosts, alongside a survey aimed at both residents and visitors in ski resort towns.
“I really want a fulsome picture,” she said. “Visitors experience ski towns very differently from the people who live and work there year-round. Understanding where those perspectives align and where they don’t is critical.”
Kirkland hopes the findings will be put toward practical guidance, not just for policymakers, but for communities and businesses trying to navigate change.
“My goal isn’t to say short-term rentals are good or bad,” she said. “It’s to provide research that helps ski towns make informed decisions that support long term community wellbeing.”
She plans to complete data collection during the 2025-26 winter season, to finish her dissertation next year and share the results widely through conferences, industry workshops and accessible summaries for communities like Park City.
“No one’s going to read a 250-page dissertation,” she said. “But they might read a few pages of findings that help them think differently about how tourism is managed.”
Kirkland is asking Park City residents, homeowners and visitors to participate in her survey on short-term rentals in North American ski resorts. The survey can be found at tinyurl.com/2s4fhwx8. Responses will be used to inform academic research and future tourism policy discussions.