How often does a Gudauri apartment actually rent?

Across the 2025/26 ski season the eleven apartments in the Altimera Collection ran at 70% occupancy. February was the strongest month, at around 90% across the collection, and some individual apartments were fully booked, at 100%, through the whole February high season.

Those are the only occupancy figures we publish, and they are the ones we would want to see if we were the buyer. Nearly every other source available to someone considering an apartment in Gudauri is a listing portal quoting an asking price. An asking price tells you what a seller hopes for. Occupancy tells you what a season actually did.

What the 70% is measured against

It is occupancy across one ski season, not across a calendar year, and it is the average of eleven apartments rather than the best one.

That distinction does more work than it looks like it does. The same apartment measured over twelve months and measured over the winter produces two very different numbers, and the twelve month version is always the smaller one. So when anyone hands you an occupancy figure for a property in Gudauri, ask which months it counts and how many units it averages before you compare it to anything else.

Why the February number matters more than the average

Demand here does not spread itself evenly across the winter. It concentrates.

Our own calendar shows it plainly: around 90% across the collection in February, with some apartments full for the entire high season. An apartment that fills in February and softens at the ends of the season is behaving normally. An apartment that does not fill in February has a problem, and an annual average is very good at hiding it.

If you are assessing a purchase, read the peak weeks first and the average second. When to ski Gudauri, month by month sets out how the season behaves, and it reads much the same from the owner's side of the table as it does from the guest's.

Three things the number does not tell you

We would rather say these ourselves than have them found out.

• It was our first full season of operation. The apartments were letting while the operation was still being assembled, and the season ran through a period of regional disruption. It is a record of what happened, not a forecast.
• Occupancy varies by apartment and by year. Floor, layout and outlook all move it, which is why some apartments reached 100% in February while the collection averaged around 90%.
• Occupancy on its own is half an answer. High occupancy at a weak rate and lower occupancy at a strong rate can arrive in the same place. We do not publish our achieved nightly rates, so treat any occupancy figure, ours included, as one of the two numbers you need.

What actually moves occupancy in a ski resort

Distance to the lift, before anything else. In New Gudauri ours is measurable rather than atmospheric: a three and a half minute walk to the gondola, and ski-in / ski-out from the building.

Then availability. Every week an owner keeps for personal use is a week the apartment cannot earn, and the weeks owners most want to be here are the weeks the resort most wants to sell. That is a perfectly reasonable trade. It simply needs to be made deliberately, before the purchase rather than after it.

Then whoever runs the calendar. Rates that never move, an enquiry answered a day late, and a single sales channel will each cost real nights across a winter. The quiet case for booking direct was written for guests, but the commission arithmetic in it is the owner's arithmetic too.

The other way to fill a winter

Nightly letting is not the only option. The same apartment can be let for the whole season to a single tenant: the Full Ski Season let runs 15 December to 15 April, 121 nights, at one fixed price with cleaning every two weeks included.

That is a different shape of income rather than simply more or less of it. You give up the peak weeks, which is where nightly letting earns hardest, and in exchange 121 nights are settled before the season starts, with one handover instead of a winter of them. Owners who want certainty take it. Owners who want a strong February do not. Both are defensible, and the choice is worth making on purpose rather than by default.

Do not build the case on summer

Gudauri has a second season. Paragliding, hiking and the road north towards Kazbegi bring people up through the warm months, which is what Gudauri beyond the slopes is about.

We do not publish a summer occupancy figure, and no purchase here should be underwritten by an assumed one. If a summer number is doing heavy lifting in somebody's projection, ask where it came from. When we have a summer figure we would stand behind, it will appear with the season attached, in exactly the form the winter one has.

Five questions worth asking before you buy anywhere in Gudauri

• Which months does the occupancy figure cover, and which season is it from?
• How many apartments does it average, and how did the weakest one do?
• What was achieved per night, rather than what was asked?
• How many nights were held back for the owner's own use?
• Who was setting the prices, and across how many channels?

A seller who can answer all five is telling you something real. A seller who can answer none of them is quoting an asking price and calling it a return.

Where to go next

Start with the Gudauri Investment Guide. It covers the market, the two ways owners buy here, and the purchase process for foreign buyers, including the 2.5% Altimera fee that a buyer pays at completion. If you would rather look at actual units first, the apartments currently for sale are listed with their size and whether they are ready to let or need work.