Vol. I · No. 1Sevier County, TennesseeAutumn 2026

The Smoky Mountain
Cabin Index

Name: The Smoky Mountain Cabin Index
Creator: Smoky Mountain Connection

Occupancy, rates, and direct-booking share — reported by cabins that show their books.

Published by Smoky Mountain Connection · Founding editor: seat open — invitation out
Pages & press by Smoky Mountain Web Co

Preview edition · not yet published

The case for an index

Every number quoted about this market is an estimate. The data services scrape listings and guess. The forums trade screenshots. The seller's agent rounds up, the buyer's lender rounds down, and somewhere between them a cabin changes hands on arithmetic nobody can check.

This index prints something that has never existed here: owner-reported actuals, published monthly, from cabins whose books are already open on their own pages. Not estimates of the market — the market, signing its own name.

Whoever publishes that number becomes the person everyone quotes. It should be somebody the mountain already trusts.

The market, as estimated

What the scrapers say about the Smokies

$347

Avg daily rate · estimated

53%

Occupancy · estimated

$46.4K

Revenue · avg listing · estimated

U.S. market rank · estimated

Source: AirDNA, a third-party data service. Not mine, not owner-reported, and not a filing.
Market: Gatlinburg, TN.
Pulled: June 2026. Every figure above is that one snapshot; none of it has been refreshed since.
Method: AirDNA models these from public listing pages and booking calendars it scrapes. A blocked night looks the same as a booked one from outside, so occupancy is inferred, not counted.
Sample: n is not published at the tier this was pulled from. I do not know how many listings are behind these four numbers, and I am not going to guess at one to make the row look complete.

Read them as a shape, not a measurement. They are the best public estimate available and they are the exact thing this index exists to replace.

The network, as reported

Cabins with open books

Property	Occ.	ADR	Direct share
Network Cabin № 1	——	——	——	reporting begins with the pilot
Network Cabin № 2	——	——	——	reporting begins with the pilot
Network Cabin № 3	——	——	——	reporting begins with the pilot
№ 4 – № 40 · open

Sample: n = 0. No cabin is reporting yet. Three seats are committed and none has published a month.
Source: Owner-reported, taken from the cabin's own page rather than retyped here, so the number on this table and the number the owner published are the same number.
Range: Trailing twelve months, restated monthly, with the reporting month named in the row.
Method: Counted from the owner's own booking record — nights actually booked, dollars actually collected — with personal-use dates excluded and marked. No scraping and no modeling.
Unverified: I publish what the owner reports. I do not audit their books, and this index will say so in every edition.

How a cabin joins the index

It gets its own page — the digital deed, built to lender-legible standard.
Its books go public — owner-reported, updated monthly, on the page itself.
It reports to the Index — and wears the two marks guests and buyers learn to look for: Listed on Smoky Mountain Connection · Managed by its operator.

How the Connection is organized

One publisher's chair sets the standards and signs every edition. One operator seat per territory carries the flag for its town — Pigeon Forge first, then Gatlinburg, Sevierville, Wears Valley, Townsend. Independent cabins join the table without a seat at all. The chair and the seats are listed here, publicly, so nobody has to wonder who was first at what: the masthead is the record.

Edition one publishes when cabins № 1 – № 3 are live and documented — the thirty-day countdown starts the day cabin three goes live. Watch it start here. Until then, these pages wait.