MARKET DATA
How Do You Price an Airbnb Cabin in the Smoky Mountains?
QUICK ANSWER
You price a Smoky Mountains cabin against two separate seasons, a summer run and a late-year run, with a long soft stretch in between. RevFactor manages 31 listings here, the most of any market on its coverage map, for a flat $350 per property per month. Over the last 12 months the area earned $186 RevPAR on a $383 average daily rate and 47% occupancy.
Author: Federico Zimerman, Founder of RevFactor. He spent 10 years in airline revenue management at American Airlines before founding Blackbird Hospitality and RevFactor. LinkedIn.
Reviewed: by the RevFactor strategist process. The Smoky Mountains listing count (31) is read from the about page coverage map, while the $383 rate and 47% occupancy come from the AirROI pull dated 2026-10-16, and the case study figures from the case study page. No Smoky Mountains number is estimated. Last modified 2026-10-21.
What does RevFactor manage in Smoky Mountains?
The Smoky Mountains are the largest concentration in the RevFactor portfolio. 20 of the 31 listings sit in Gatlinburg, 5 in Sevierville, 4 in Pigeon Forge, and one each in Knoxville and Pittman Center. That density matters for a practical reason. When a calendar behaves oddly, there are usually sister listings within a few miles to check it against, so a strategist can tell a market move from a problem with one cabin.
- Gatlinburg: 20 listings
- Pigeon Forge: 4 listings
- Sevierville: 5 listings
- Knoxville: 1 listing
- Pittman Center: 1 listing
The Smoky Mountains counts above are read from the about page coverage map.
What does the Smoky Mountains market look like right now?
The table is the market, not RevFactor's portfolio. It covers 4,019 active listings in the Gatlinburg locality, which is the number AirROI reports for the area. Two figures stand out against RevFactor's other markets: a $383 average daily rate and a 60-day booking lead time. Guests here plan ahead, and they pay mountain-cabin rates for a stay that averages 3.5 nights.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average daily rate (ADR) | $383 |
| Occupancy | 47% |
| RevPAR | $186 |
| Booking lead time | 60 days |
| Average length of stay | 3.5 nights |
| Active AirROI listings | 4,019 |
Occupancy of 47% looks modest next to the rate, and that is the shape of the market. A cabin that sleeps ten can charge several times the market average on a holiday weekend and still sit empty on a Tuesday in February. The average hides both. This is why I look at RevPAR, which is revenue per available night, before I look at rate alone.
A 60-day lead time also changes what a last-minute discount does. In a market where guests book about 33 days ahead, as they do in the Poconos, an empty date three weeks out still has a fair chance to fill at full price. Here a date that is empty at three weeks has often missed its best buyers, and the question becomes how much to concede to fill it.
The 4,019-listing sample is large, which keeps the averages stable. It also means the average covers everything from small cottages to cabins with a dozen beds, so I never quote it as a target for one property. It is a check on whether a cabin's rate and occupancy sit in a plausible range for the area.
When does Smoky Mountains earn the most?
The three highest RevPAR months over the window were December, June and July, with July at $264 the single best. The lowest was February at $110, so the best month earns 2.4 times the worst. August falls 42% from July, which makes the late-summer step down sharper than most hosts expect.
12-MONTH SEASONALITY
Monthly RevPAR in Smoky Mountains
October 2025 to September 2026, monthly average
How do we price an Airbnb in Smoky Mountains?
Let me show you how I read this market. The first thing I notice is that Smoky Mountains revenue has two humps, not one. June and July sit near $264, then August drops to $154, and the next climb arrives in the fall: October $243, December $249. A season map built around a single summer peak would price September and November as dead months when they are not.
So the season map starts with the shoulders. I want the calendar to show the June to July run, the October to December run and the January to February trough as three distinct blocks, each with its own base rate and its own floor. The trough is the part hosts get wrong most often. At $110 RevPAR in February, a floor set from summer logic will leave the cabin empty for weeks, and a floor set too low will give away the few weekends that still book at a premium.
Minimum stays follow the 3.5-night average. A cabin that requires two nights in July is leaving nothing on the table, because demand is strong enough to fill around the rule. The same two-night rule in August, when RevPAR has dropped to $154, can strand single nights between bookings. Those orphan nights are where I loosen a rule first, and I do it by date range, not across the whole year.
Holiday weeks need their own treatment. December reached $249 RevPAR, close to the summer peak, so the weeks around Christmas and New Year are priced as events and not as ordinary winter dates. January then falls to $116, a 54% drop in one month, and the calendar has to change character on the first of the month.
Lead time sets how early rates move. With bookings landing about 60 days out on average, the dates two months ahead are the ones that decide the month. I check pacing weekly against the comp set and move rates when a date is filling faster or slower than comparable cabins, rather than waiting for the last week. The work happens inside the host's own PriceLabs account, and the host keeps guest messages, cleaning and the listing.
I also think about the cost of being wrong. The case study below notes that a bad rate decision on a peak weekend costs four figures in this market, not three. That is the reason daily monitoring against a built comp set earns its place on larger cabins.
Federico Zimerman, Founder of RevFactor.
What happened to a RevFactor listing in Smoky Mountains?
One of the 31 Smoky Mountains listings has a full case study. The owner, Grant, onboarded a 6-bedroom Gatlinburg cabin in February 2026. The numbers below are booked pacing for June to August 2026 as of the May data pull, and they are on-the-books revenue, not earned revenue.
| Jun to Aug 2026 | On the books | Same time last year |
|---|---|---|
| Booked revenue | $68,960 | $21,501 |
| Average daily rate | $1,352 | $1,265 |
| Occupancy | 55.4% | 18.5% |
Read the full breakdown in the case study, or see all case studies.
Who is RevFactor for in Smoky Mountains, and who is it not for?
A GOOD FIT
- You own one to five cabins or homes in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville or the surrounding towns and want a person to run pricing and minimum stays.
- Your calendar fills well on peak weekends but empties between them, and you suspect the weekday and shoulder dates are priced from the wrong logic.
- You already pay for PriceLabs or are willing to open an account, and you want a strategist working inside it.
NOT A FIT
- You want someone to handle guest messages, cleaning or turnovers. RevFactor covers pricing and calendar rules only.
- You manage more than five properties and expect the flat per-property price. Larger portfolios move to enterprise pricing.
- You want a promised revenue number. The figures on this page are market averages and booked pacing, and neither is a forecast.
What does RevFactor cost for 1 to 5 properties?
A Smoky Mountains owner pays $350 per property per month, plus a one-time $150 onboarding fee for each home. The price is identical whether a Smoky Mountains home sits on a $383 average night or a far cheaper one, and RevFactor takes no share of Smoky Mountains booking revenue. The Tennessee terms match every other market and sit on the pricing page.
| Properties | Monthly | First month |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $350 | $500 |
| 2 | $700 | $1,000 |
| 3 | $1,050 | $1,500 |
| 4 | $1,400 | $2,000 |
| 5 | $1,750 | $2,500 |
Questions about Airbnb revenue management in Smoky Mountains
How much does an Airbnb make in the Smoky Mountains?
What is a good occupancy rate for a Smoky Mountains cabin?
When is peak season for Airbnb in Gatlinburg?
What is the booking lead time in the Smoky Mountains?
Does dynamic pricing work for cabins in Gatlinburg?
Who can manage revenue for my Airbnb in the Smoky Mountains?
How long does onboarding take?
How were these numbers measured?
The market figures come from AirROI's market summary for the Gatlinburg locality, pulled 2026-10-16, covering 4,019 active listings. The seasonality series is AirROI's monthly RevPAR for the same locality from October 2025 to September 2026. RevPAR here means revenue per available night as AirROI computes it. The ratio of best to worst month and the percentage change between months are my arithmetic on those twelve monthly values. The Gatlinburg locality stands in for the whole area, so figures for Pigeon Forge or Sevierville will differ.
Sources and data
- Smoky Mountains market summary and RevPAR series from AirROI (https://www.airroi.com), pulled 2026-10-16 for the Gatlinburg locality on 4,019 listings.
- RevFactor's 31 Smoky Mountains listings, by locality, as printed on the about page coverage map.
- The fee a Smoky Mountains owner pays: /pricing/.
- Visitor and seasonality source: Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, Plan Your Tennessee Vacation, checked 2026-10-20. The page checked states no seasonality figure (Not published); no figure on this page is taken from it.
- Smoky Mountains weather context is published in the NOAA climate normals dataset, NOAA NCEI U.S. Climate Normals, checked 2026-10-20; the station temperature and rainfall values for Smoky Mountains live in that dataset, and none are copied into this page.
- Portfolio benchmarks behind Smoky Mountains: the STR revenue benchmarks post.
Beyond Smoky Mountains, the rest of Tennessee and every other market we cover are one click away, and the case studies show how other homes fared. Owners weighing Smoky Mountains can read how the work runs on the Airbnb revenue management service page, see how providers score on the ranked list of STR revenue management companies, and check the portfolio data behind these Smoky Mountains comparisons in the benchmarks post.
Which nearby markets does RevFactor cover?
- Lake Lure, North Carolina1 RevFactor listings
- North Georgia Mountains, Georgia3 RevFactor listings
- Central Kentucky, Kentucky4 RevFactor listings
NEXT STEP
Talk to a strategist
A 30-minute call about Smoky Mountains. We pull the Smoky Mountains comp set for your home, look at where Smoky Mountains pacing is leaving money against a $186 market RevPAR, and say plainly whether the service fits your Smoky Mountains home.
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