STR Bookings for Smoky Mountains

[Erica Calella]

Hi everyone, question for those of you on here who have experience with STR, specifically in the Western North Carolina market.

At what point do summer vacation rentals typically start to book? As of today, my bookings for June-August are really light, but the house has done well so far considering the listing only went live in early March. My property manager has the property listed on most of the major booking sights, so I am comfortable with their efforts. I am mostly just trying to discover any tips or tricks or identify any strategies that I could potentially be missing out on. Or even just looking to find some reassurance while I play the waiting game.

Any insights, stories or shared experiences would be great!! I am a new investor in this area and am also looking to making connections with anyone else in this market who is open to it as well.

[Kyle H.]

@Erica Calella My market is specifically Bryson City and I would say the general sentiment here is that we are seeing a high level of last minute bookings across smaller properties with larger properties seeing more booked occupancy ahead of time.  This has been the trend recently and can definitely cause some booking anxiety for owners.  In my area the amount of inventory has had a high impact on off season bookings, with a tremendous amount of price pressure chasing bookings. Anecdotally I can see 8 vacation rentals from my personal residence and across the eight they have been booked less than 20 days since 1/1.   My personal opinion is that the demand is there for the high season and we will have normal occupancy for the summer/fall.  Just for reference I have 10 properties and all are 2BR and 1BR.