Both Parks Just Went Negative. Your Rates Are Doing the Work Now.

Both Parks Just Went Negative. Your Rates Are Doing the Work Now.

Yellowstone and Grand Teton both set May records. Then June came in down at
both, and almost nobody has seen those numbers yet. The national data points
the same direction: revenue is growing on rate this year, not on volume.

Yellowstone hosted 903,025 recreation visits in June, down 3% from June 2025.
Grand Teton hosted 666,422, down 2% from last June — still its third-busiest
June on record.

Read the year-to-date before you panic. Yellowstone sits at 1,676,678 visits
through June, down 1% on the year. Grand Teton sits at 1,300,932, up 2.5%.
The two parks are not telling the same story. One is flat to soft. The other
is having a good year with a slow month.

What they share is the shape: a record May, then a June that went the other way.

The national picture explains more than the park numbers do. AirDNA's 2026
Midyear Outlook forecasts US short-term rental occupancy at 57.4% this year,
above the pre-pandemic average of 57%. Demand and available listings are each
expected to grow 2.7%. RevPAR is projected up 2.9%, driven almost entirely by
average daily rate. Nightly rate growth accelerated from 0.7% year-over-year in
January to roughly 3% by spring.

The reason supply stayed tight isn't discipline. It's financing. Renewed
inflation and an energy shock pushed mortgage rates back above 6%, and the new
listings everyone expected this year never showed up. Incumbents got pricing
power by accident.

Travelers are moving too: booking later, taking shorter trips, choosing larger
homes.

Test your ceiling on remaining peak inventory. If you have August or early
September dates open, raise the rate and watch what happens. You're not trying
to fill the calendar. You're trying to find where demand actually breaks. I'd
rather learn that in August than guess at it next spring.

Tighten minimum stays on high-demand weekends. Two-night minimums make sense
when you're chasing volume. When revenue comes from rate, they cost you. Test
three or four nights on strong weekends and watch cancellations. If they hold,
your rate was low.

Stop discounting to fill gaps. Scattered midweek availability in July or August
isn't an emergency. Discounting trains your guests to wait, and it costs you
rate next year.

Build the shoulder season plan now. Grand Teton has been setting records in
September and October — last fall was its busiest to date. That's where the
growth is. If you're not marketing fall inventory on fewer crowds and better
wildlife, you'll hit November with an empty calendar and no leverage.

RV park and campground operators: same logic. If nightly sites aren't filling,
test upward before you test downward. The STRs and hotels in your comp set are
already raising rates.

No transaction this week. Two things worth watching if you're underwriting.

Utah raised the transient room tax on St. George stays from 4.25% to 4.50%,
effective July 1. Total transient room taxes there now run 6.57% on top of
6.75% sales tax. Small, but check your rate card.

Montana's second-home tax is still unresolved. The challenge to SB 542 — which
cut rates on primary residences and raised them on second homes and short-term
rentals — remains in Gallatin County District Court. The state Supreme Court
declined to fast-track it, ruling only that the case didn't meet the bar for
emergency review. It said nothing about whether the law is constitutional. If
you're modeling Montana acquisitions, that liability is open.

Underwrite accordingly. Pro formas built on 2022 occupancy will disappoint.
Model conservative occupancy and rate growth that reflects what the market is
actually delivering.

Know an STR operator or campground owner who'd find this useful? Forward this
email — they can subscribe at timberlineoperator.com.

Are you raising rates this summer or holding? Reply and tell me what you're
seeing on August availability.

— Timberline Operator

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