The Broadmoor

Colorado's Grand Resort Tradition, at Scale

The Rockies have produced two distinct categories of luxury resort: the boutique mountain lodge, intimate and terrain-specific, and the grand full-service property that functions closer to a small town than a hotel. The Broadmoor belongs decisively to the second category. Set across 5,000 acres at the edge of Colorado Springs with Cheyenne Lake as its centerpiece, the property has held a Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating since 1976, one of the longest uninterrupted Five-Star runs in American hospitality. The 2026 La Liste Leading Hotels ranking places it at 95 points, which positions it in the same tier of historically credentialed American resorts as Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles and The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, albeit in an entirely different register: where those properties are urban and curated, The Broadmoor is expansive and activity-led.

The resort's 784 rooms spread across multiple buildings whose architectural character shifts noticeably as you move through the grounds. European ornamental works, sourced in part from the collection of founders Spencer and Julie Penrose, sit alongside a substantial display of Western art from the current owner's personal collection. The result is a property whose visual identity reads as accumulated rather than designed from a single brief, which gives it a sense of layered history that newer resort developments rarely replicate.

A Dining Programme Built for Long Stays

Multi-day resort properties face a structural dining challenge: guests who stay four or five nights need enough variety to avoid repetition without the operation becoming incoherent. The Broadmoor's approach is to run a range of formats across the campus, each with a distinct register, rather than concentrating investment in a single flagship. Summit restaurant represents the property's most considered culinary offering, with meticulously crafted dishes at the formal end of the resort's range. It sits within a dining ecosystem that extends from charming cafés serving coffee and sandwiches through to Bar del Lago, where shareable plates and specialty cocktails occupy the informal middle ground.

The most characterful element of the dining programme is the Golden Bee, an authentic 19th-century English gastropub transplanted to the Colorado Rockies. The format — fish and chips, ragtime sing-alongs, period fittings — is not the kind of thing a contemporary hotel would commission from scratch, which is precisely what makes it credible. It reads as an inherited institution rather than a designed concept, and that distinction matters to guests who have spent time in actual English pubs. The Golden Bee and Bar del Lago represent the property's social anchors, the spaces that give a stay texture beyond the room and the pool.

For guests focused on the resort's food and beverage range, the comparison set is not simply other Colorado Springs options (see our full Colorado Springs restaurants guide for the city's wider scene) but rather other grand American resort properties where dining breadth is a core part of the value proposition. In that frame, The Broadmoor aligns more closely with properties like Canyon Ranch Tucson in Tucson in terms of the self-contained resort logic, though with considerably more dining format variety.

Rooms and Suites Across a Multi-Building Campus

The range of accommodation at The Broadmoor reflects the scale of the property. Classic, Superior, and Premier rooms across the historic buildings share a European-influenced palette of Colorado sky blue with camel accents, designed to function as a calming counterpoint to days spent outdoors. Broadmoor West premier rooms and suites are among the most requested for their direct views over Cheyenne Lake or the surrounding mountains, with many featuring balconies or Juliet windows that make those views functional rather than incidental.

At the suite level, the Penrose suite is the most historically significant accommodation: three bedrooms with individual baths, a dining room, a formal living room, a glass-enclosed sunroom, and views spanning the mountains, lake, and city. The West Gaylord suite is equally generous in scale, with a large outdoor terrace and a guest history that includes Liza Minnelli, Cher, Elton John, and Bill Gates. Guests seeking residential-scale accommodation have additional options through the Estate Collection, which includes cottages with high-beamed ceilings and stone fireplaces adjacent to the East Golf Course, brownstones with mountain or mountain-adjacent views, and an Estate House configured for large family or group gatherings.

Landscape and Activity: The 7,000-Acre Logic

The Broadmoor's activity infrastructure is leading understood as two concentric circles. The inner circle is the main 5,000-acre campus, where the pool complex, Cheyenne Lake paddleboats, lawn bowling court, movie theater, and art and history tours operate. The outer circle is the Broadmoor Wilderness Experience, which adds The Ranch at Emerald Valley, Cloud Camp, and the Fly Fishing Camp across an additional 2,000 acres. That wider wilderness extension, covered separately in our profile of The Ranch at Emerald Valley, represents a different mode of engagement with the Colorado terrain than what the main campus offers.

On the main campus, the pool complex is organized around the Lakeside Pool, which uses a zero-entry graduated rim to create the visual effect of water meeting the lake beyond. Slide Mountain adds two two-story waterslides (height minimum: 44 inches), alongside a wading pool and two hot tubs. The lawn bowling court near the outdoor stone fireplace on the cottage grounds receives little traffic relative to the pool complex, which means it functions as genuine quiet space during peak season. The onsite movie theater rotates three family-friendly releases weekly.

Sightseeing around the wider Colorado Springs area runs via Jeep or mountain bike in addition to walking, and guided art and history tours operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for resort guests. For guests placing The Broadmoor in the context of the broader American West luxury resort category, the comparison properties span a wide range: Amangiri in Canyon Point and Amangani in Jackson Hole are more architecturally singular and terrain-specific; Sage Lodge in Pray and Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur are smaller and more immersive. The Broadmoor occupies a different point on that spectrum: it is the grand American resort in the classical sense, where scale, programme breadth, and longevity are the primary arguments.

Planning Your Stay

The Broadmoor sits at 1 Lake Avenue, Colorado Springs, and the resort offers shuttle service to and from Colorado Springs Airport directly. For guests arriving from Denver International Airport, private sedans or SUVs are bookable through the resort's travel partner, Gray Line, with reservations required at least 48 hours in advance. A 950-space parking garage sits directly across the roundabout from Broadmoor Main, with valet parking also available for guests who prefer it. The kids' concierge programme handles the specific logistics of traveling with children, from activity scheduling to age-appropriate recommendations across the campus. Art and history tours, available to resort guests on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, are worth booking at check-in rather than leaving to chance. For broader orientation on where The Broadmoor sits within Colorado Springs' hospitality scene, our full Colorado Springs hotels guide maps the city's options across categories and price tiers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the standout thing about The Broadmoor?

The combination of scale, longevity, and programme breadth. The property has held a Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star rating continuously since 1976 and earned 95 points on the 2026 La Liste Leading Hotels list. With 5,000 acres on the main campus, 784 rooms across multiple buildings, and an additional 2,000 wilderness acres through the Broadmoor Wilderness Experience, it operates at a scope that very few American resorts match. Colorado Springs sits at the base of the Rockies, which means mountain access is immediate rather than theoretical.

What's the most popular room type at The Broadmoor?

Broadmoor West premier rooms and suites are among the most requested, primarily for their direct views of Cheyenne Lake or the surrounding mountains. Many include balconies or Juliet windows. The Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star property also offers the Estate Collection for guests requiring more residential-scale accommodation, including cottages, brownstones, and an Estate House.

What's the leading way to book The Broadmoor?

Given the property's Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star standing and its position at 95 points on the 2026 La Liste Leading Hotels list, booking directly through the resort is the most reliable route for securing specific room categories, suite requests, and add-ons such as the Gray Line airport transfer from Denver International. For peak summer and holiday periods, lead time matters: the range of accommodation types means availability is more complex than at a single-building hotel.

What kind of traveler is The Broadmoor a good fit for?

If you are traveling with family and need a property where multiple age groups can operate independently, The Broadmoor's programme depth makes a strong case: kids' concierge, Slide Mountain, paddleboats, a movie theater, and the wider wilderness properties give different generations genuinely distinct itineraries. Couples seeking the intimacy of a property like Little Palm Island Resort and Spa in Little Torch Key or Kona Village in Kailua-Kona will find The Broadmoor operates on a different logic. It rewards guests who want to stay on property for multiple days and use the full range of what 7,000 acres makes possible. The Forbes Five-Star credential is the right trust signal here: it reflects service consistency across a complex, multi-venue operation, which is harder to maintain than it is at a boutique property.

How does The Broadmoor's dining programme compare to other grand American resorts?

The Broadmoor runs several distinct dining formats across its campus rather than consolidating around a single flagship restaurant. Summit delivers the property's most formal culinary experience, while the Golden Bee, a period-authentic 19th-century English gastropub, anchors the casual end with fish and chips and ragtime evenings. That range across one property puts The Broadmoor in the category of self-contained resort dining ecosystems, where the goal is variety across a multi-night stay rather than a single destination meal. Guests specifically focused on Colorado Springs' broader culinary scene can cross-reference our full Colorado Springs restaurants guide for off-property options.