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

The Smoky Mountain
Cabin Index

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

Published by Smoky Mountain Connection · Founding editor: Vernon Corum
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
53%
Occupancy
$46.4K
Revenue · avg listing
#3
U.S. market by revenue

Source: AirDNA market estimates, Gatlinburg, June 2026. Useful — but estimates all the same.

The network, as reported

Cabins with open books

PropertyOcc.ADRDirect 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

How a cabin joins the index

  1. It gets its own page — the digital deed, built to lender-legible standard.
  2. Its books go public — owner-reported, updated monthly, on the page itself.
  3. 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.