The Smoky Mountain Vacation Rental Forum

Tom Goodwin
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

The Smoky Mountain Vacation Rental Forum is a podcast for cabin owners, self-managers, management companies, and hospitality professionals who care deeply about how vacation rentals are done in the Great Smoky Mountains. Hosted by Tom Goodwin — CEO of Mountain Laurel Chalets, the oldest family-owned vacation rental management company in Tennessee — this forum exists to raise the bar for professionalism, hospitality, and community in one of America's most visited destinations. Honest conversation. Practical takeaways. No hype.

Episodes

  1. Jul 23

    Episode 9 Excerpts from A Night on Ski Mountain: Segment 3 What We Owe This Place

    Welcome back to the Smoky Mountain Vacation Rental Forum. This is Part Three — the final episode — in our Night on Ski Mountain series. In Part One, you heard the state of the market. In Part Two, you met the people behind Mountain Laurel Chalets — Kay, Kelly, and Corey. This episode is different from both. This one steps outside our company. That night at Ober Mountain, I brought four people onto the stage who between them represent decades of history in this community — not just in vacation rentals, but in Gatlinburg itself. Patrick Potter, president of the Chalet Village Owners Association. Patrick's owned property here for thirty years. He used to have his home on our program — now he keeps it strictly for personal use, doesn't rent it at all. He cares about this village the way you care about a neighborhood you've raised kids in, because that's exactly what he's done. Randy Watson — general manager of the Gatlinburg Sky Park, and a high school friend of my wife Susan's, so this one goes back a long way. Randy and I also serve together as elected members of the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce. When we recorded this, Randy was closing in on forty-nine years at the Sky Park. Forty-nine years watching this town change. Vernon Corum, who you already know if you caught Episode 6 — an educator, a market observer, someone genuinely passionate about elevating professionalism across this industry. Vernon and I connected through LinkedIn, of all places, and it's turned into a real friendship. And Pam Betts. Pam owned a chalet company right next door to our office, back before Mountain Laurel acquired it more than twenty years ago. She kept her own home on our program after that. She served thirty years on the Chalet Village Owners Association board. And her connection to our family goes back even further than that — she and her husband were guests of my in-laws, Ralph and Dot, all the way back in 1974. As it happened, the night we recorded this was the sixty-year anniversary weekend for the Chalet Village Owners Association — so having four members of that board in the room together was something none of us take lightly. I asked these four one real question, in a few different ways: what do we owe this place? Not what can we extract from it. Not what can we get out of it this season. What do we owe it. What came out of that conversation is honest, and at times it's pointed — about deferred maintenance, about communication breaking down between owners and managers, about the difference between a consumer culture and a steward's culture. I'll step in with a little commentary here and there, but mostly, I just want you to hear what they said. Let's get into it.

  2. Jul 11

    Episode 8 Excerpts from A Night on Ski Mountain: Segment 2 — The People Behind the Promise

    The second installment from The Night on Ski Mountain.  This panel of experts in Vacation Rentals represents 85 years of leadership with Mountain Laurel Chalets.

  3. Jun 15 ·  Video

    Episode 7 Excerpts from A Night on Ski Mountain--Part 1 The State of the Market

    Every year, Mountain Laurel Chalets gathers its homeowners for an evening called the Night on Ski Mountain — held high above Gatlinburg at the Ober Mountain Lounge. It's not a sales event. It's a conversation. Real data, honest perspective, and the kind of market talk that most management companies keep to themselves. This is Part One of three episodes drawn from that gathering. In this segment, Tom Goodwin gives what he calls the state of the union — a look at the five types of vacation rental operators now competing in the Smoky Mountain market, the three questions every cabin owner is asking (and whether they're getting honest answers), and why the choice of who manages your home has never mattered more than it does right now. Then MLC's COO Corey Hawks walks through the real numbers: where the Smoky Mountain market actually stands in 2026, what's happening with supply growth, why October has overtaken July as the top revenue month, how booking lead times have shrunk to under 30 days, and what the race to the bottom in the four-to-six-bedroom segment means for owners who overpaid in 2021 and 2022. This episode is a live recording from a private homeowner event. The audio reflects that — a real room, real conversation, no polish. What it lacks in studio quality it more than makes up for in honesty. Parts Two and Three of the Night on Ski Mountain series are coming soon. Mountain Laurel Chalets has been managing vacation rentals in Gatlinburg since 1972. Learn more at mtnlaurelchalets.com.

  4. Jun 10

    Episode 6 STR From the Ground Up: A Conversation with Vernon Corum

    What does it actually take to succeed with a vacation rental in the Smoky Mountains right now? Not the version you see on Instagram or in a realtor's projection — the real version, from someone who walks the properties, sees the gaps, and helps owners fix them. Vernon Corum is a real estate agent, investor, STR educator, and founder of Short-Term Rental Rescue — a program where he walks struggling properties and identifies exactly what's going wrong. He's toured over 200 Smokies properties a year and has a boots-on-the-ground perspective on this market that's almost impossible to replicate. In this conversation, Tom and Vernon dig into the operational blind spots that are quietly killing properties in this market, the misconception that vacation rental ownership can be truly passive, what it means to actually know your guest, why differentiation matters more than ever in a market with 13,000–19,000 available properties, and what it looks like to do this business the right way. Vernon also shares his vision for GRID Smokies — a new collaborative community for investors, operators, and vendors who want to get in a room together and actually help each other. Details in the show notes. This is a conversation about stewardship, trust, and the long game. We think you'll find it worth your time.

  5. May 4

    Episode 5 Don't Build Your Business on Borrowed Ground

    If you vacation rental reservation are all coming from one platform, you are not building a business, you are renting one.  In this episode Tom Goodwin unpacks what the data actually says about chanel dependency in the short term rental industry, and why it deeply matters for cabin owners and operators here in the Smoky Mountains.

  6. Apr 13

    Episode 4 Managing From Four Hours Away: What 20 Years of Getting It Right Looks Like

    Tom Goodwin sits down with Paula Elliott, owner of Goldilocks Haven in Chalet Village — one of Gatlinburg's most storied vacation communities — for a conversation about what professional self-management actually looks like over the long haul. Paula bought her three-bedroom cabin in 2004 with her late husband, spent nine years learning the ropes with a management company, and has been self-managing from Indiana ever since. What she's built over 20 years isn't passive income — it's a system built on trust, relationships, proactive communication, and genuine care for guests, neighbors, and the community she's been part of for decades. In this episode, Tom and Paula talk through the infrastructure every long-distance owner needs, why setting expectations with guests prevents middle-of-the-night calls, how to think about the local workforce with the respect they deserve, and what it really means to be a good neighbor in a market that's changed dramatically since 2004. Paula also shares her honest take on the wave of new investors entering the Smokies — and what she wishes someone had told her from day one. If you own a cabin in the Smokies and you're doing it yourself, or thinking about it, this conversation is one you'll want to hear more than once.

  7. Apr 3

    Episode 3 What Great Hospitality Actually Looks Like — And Why It's Getting Rare

    Think about the last time you were a guest somewhere and walked away thinking — that felt like they actually cared. Not just clean, not just functional. Like someone thought about you before you arrived. Like you mattered beyond the transaction. How long ago was that? Now here is the harder question. Is that what your guests experience when they stay at your cabin? In Episode 3 Tom Goodwin makes the case that genuine hospitality is the single most underutilized competitive advantage in the Smoky Mountain vacation rental market right now. The properties are getting more elaborate every year. The amenities keep growing. But the human care for the people staying in those cabins is not keeping pace — and that gap is both the biggest problem in this market and the biggest opportunity for anyone willing to close it. Tom shares the story of Dot Egli, co-founder of Mountain Laurel Chalets, who built one of the most guest-loyal businesses in Gatlinburg's history on five simple words — love people and care for them well. He also speaks directly to self-managing owners about why their size is actually a hospitality advantage, not a liability. Great hospitality is not expensive. It is intentional. And it is available to every single person listening to this episode right now.

  8. Apr 3

    Episode 2 What's Really Happening in This Market — The Honest Version

    div]:bg-bg-000/50 [&_pre>div]:border-0.5 [&_pre>div]:border-border-400 [&_.ignore-pre-bg>div]:bg-transparent [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.standard-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pl-2 [&_.progressive-markdown_:is(p,blockquote,ul,ol,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6)]:pr-8"> _*]:min-w-0 gap-3 standard-markdown"> When was the last time someone gave you a completely honest answer about how the Smoky Mountain vacation rental market is actually doing right now? Not a projection. Not a pitch. Not a number someone pulled out of a report to make you feel good about signing a contract. Just the truth. That is what this episode is. Tom Goodwin has been watching this specific market for over 30 years — through fires, through a pandemic, through the wildest boom this market has ever seen, and through the correction that followed. In Episode 2 he cuts through the noise and gives you the honest picture of where things stand right now. What actually happened between 2020 and 2024. Why those years were never the new normal. What the correction means for your cabin. Why high occupancy is not automatically good news. What metrics actually tell the real story. And most importantly — what you should be doing about it right now. The market is not broken. But it is maturing. And maturing markets reward quality and punish mediocrity. This episode tells you what that means for you.

  9. Mar 27

    Episode 1-- 25,000 Cabins — Are We Doing This Right?

    SHOW NOTES When was the last time you sat down with another cabin owner or property manager in the Smoky Mountains and had an honest conversation — not a sales pitch, not a comparison of numbers, just a real conversation about how to do this better? If you're having trouble remembering, that's exactly what this forum was built for. In Episode 1, Tom Goodwin — CEO of Mountain Laurel Chalets and a 30-year veteran of the Smoky Mountain vacation rental market — opens the show with the story behind it all. How Dot and Ralph Egli got engaged on top of Mount LeConte, moved to Gatlinburg before the roads were paved, and started welcoming strangers into their home simply because that's what good neighbors did. That was hospitality before it was a business — and that foundation is what this forum is built on. Tom gives an honest picture of where the market stands today: roughly 25,000 vacation rental units in Sevier County, over 130 organized management companies, national brands making big promises, and a wide range of quality that affects every operator in the destination. The truth is, a bad guest experience anywhere in the Smokies leaves an impression on all of us. He makes the case for abundance over scarcity — why the strongest markets are built by operators who want each other to succeed — and lays out the four core values that will guide every episode of this forum: transparency and trust, hospitality first, generosity and abundance, and professionalism with humility. This isn't a hype show. It's not a sales pitch. It's a forum — built for cabin owners, self-managing owners, and property managers who care about how this is done and want to do it better. Let's build something together that's bigger than us. KEY TAKEAWAYS The most enduring hospitality businesses are built on genuine care — not strategy. Community before commerce. That order matters. A bad guest experience anywhere in the Smokies leaves an impression on the whole destination. You're not just managing a property — you're contributing to a shared reputation. Scarcity thinking costs more than you realize — in knowledge, in relationships, in reputation. Abundance is a daily decision, not just a feeling. Ask yourself: Am I operating from abundance or from fear? The question this forum keeps coming back to: Am I bringing real professionalism and a genuine heart for hospitality to what I do? TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Opening question: When did you last have an honest conversation about this market? 01:45 — Welcome to the Forum — what this is and who it's for 04:00 — Why "forum" and not "podcast" — building together vs. broadcasting 07:30 — The origin story: Dot and Ralph Egli, Mount LeConte, and two bedrooms at $20 a night 14:00 — The honest state of the market: 25,000 cabins, 130+ companies, and a wide range of quality 18:30 — Abundance vs. scarcity: why the strongest markets are built by operators who want each other to win 23:00 — The four core values of this forum 25:30 — Season preview and what's coming in Episodes 2 and 3 27:00 — A Night on Ski Mountain — April 24th at Ober Mountain 29:00 — Three honest questions to sit with and sign-off   LINKS & RESOURCES A Night on Ski Mountain — April 24th, 6 PM at Ober Mountain, Gatlinburg. Free, open to all, RSVP required: mtnlaurelchalets.com/rsvp Mountain Laurel Chalets — mtnlaurelchalets.com Subscribe on Apple Podcasts — [link] Subscribe on Spotify — [link] Follow on YouTube — [link] CALL TO ACTION If this resonates with you — if you're a cabin owner, self-managing owner, or property manager who wants to be part of this conversation — subscribe and join us every week. And if you're in the Smokies, come meet us in person. April 24th at Ober Mountain. Register at mtnlaurelchalets.com. Let's build something together that's bigger than us.

    Episode 1-- 25,000 Cabins — Are We Doing This Right?
  • 9 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The Smoky Mountain Vacation Rental Forum is a podcast for cabin owners, self-managers, management companies, and hospitality professionals who care deeply about how vacation rentals are done in the Great Smoky Mountains. Hosted by Tom Goodwin — CEO of Mountain Laurel Chalets, the oldest family-owned vacation rental management company in Tennessee — this forum exists to raise the bar for professionalism, hospitality, and community in one of America's most visited destinations. Honest conversation. Practical takeaways. No hype.

Information