The Week Between Christmas and New Year’s: What STR Hosts Discover About Those Seven Days

There is a week every year that most STR hosts either underprice by half, manage in a panic, or just leave sitting half-empty and wonder what went wrong. It runs from December 26 to January 1, and I have watched host after host walk into it completely unprepared.

I run two cabins outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I started hosting in 2018 to cover property taxes and kept going because, mostly, I like people. The holiday gap took me three full years to figure out. Now it is one of my favorite weeks on the calendar. Here is what I know.

Who Actually Books Christmas Week

The first thing most hosts get wrong about this period is who books it.

The guests who make reservations for December 26 through January 1 are not the cozy-family-around-the-fire crowd. Those folks booked in October. They had their Christmas cabin planned before Thanksgiving. The people who fill your calendar after Christmas are running from something.

I call them Christmas Escapees, and I say that with genuine affection. Something happened at the family dinner table, or maybe everything was fine and they are just done. Either way, they found themselves on December 24 or 25, pulled out their phones, and started searching for somewhere to go. They are motivated in a way July guests simply are not. They are not comparison-shopping. They are escaping.

I have hosted so many of these guests over the years that I could write a separate column just about them. There is the retired couple who showed up at my bigger cabin every December 27 for four years straight, never said a word about why they needed to disappear each year after Christmas, and always left a perfect review. There is the grown son who put in his booking message, “My sister, brother, and I need a few days away from the parents.” There is the woman who arrived alone on December 27, stayed through January 2, read four books by the fire, and later told me it was the best trip she had taken in a decade.

Christmas Escapees share three traits. They book late (most of mine come in during the final three weeks before Christmas). They are willing to pay because they need this trip. And they give you no trouble whatsoever, because what they came for is quiet and they are going to protect that quiet themselves.

They are not looking for local activities or restaurant recommendations. They want a hot tub that actually works, firewood stacked on the porch, and a kitchen that is genuinely clean. Give them that and you will get the kind of review that makes future guests book without reading the other ones.

The December 26 Checkout Problem

Now I need to talk about something nobody tells first-year hosts before they walk straight into it.

December 26 is the most complicated checkout day of the entire year, and it has nothing to do with how reliable your cleaning crew is. It is a collision of two completely different guest timelines.

Your Christmas guests, the ones who arrived December 24 or 25, are leaving on December 26. They are on holiday time. They were up late, the kids are wound up, someone is probably still figuring out how to assemble something that came in a box. Your 11 a.m. checkout means nothing to them until 11:05, and even then it means something different than it means to you.

I had a family, nice people, no problems otherwise, call me at 10:48 on December 26 to explain that the children were still opening presents and they would need “maybe until two or three.” I had cleaners booked at noon. My incoming Christmas Escapees were arriving at 4 p.m. I spent that afternoon on the phone doing a kind of holiday triage that I am not anxious to repeat.

What I do now: I do not allow same-day turnovers on December 26. Christmas guests get a natural departure timeline with no pressure. I block December 26 as its own gap day in my calendar, price it at a full night rate if guests want to stay the extra day, and start all my Christmas Escapee bookings on December 27 at the earliest. That one-day buffer has saved me more stress than any other single calendar decision I have made.

If you are still working out how to manage checkout timing during the busy season, I covered the checkout time problem in depth over at this piece on what every host eventually learns about checkout. The holiday version is just the same problem with more emotion and tinsel.

How I Price This Week (And Why I Stopped Feeling Guilty)

Year one, I priced Christmas week like a regular December weekend. Year two, same. Year three, a friend who hosts in a ski town called me after she looked at my calendar and my rates, and she was not gentle about it.

“Loretta,” she said, “you are charging slow-Tuesday rates for the most motivated guests of the year. What exactly are you doing?”

She was not wrong.

Christmas week in a mountain or cabin market is not a standard December week. The guests who want your property during this period are specifically motivated and not price-sensitive in the way they would be in, say, February. StaySTRA data shows December occupancy in the Gatlinburg area running around 59 percent for the month overall. That number sounds steady, but it hides the shape of the month. The first two weeks of December are quiet. The holiday gap is packed. If you price December flat, you are leaving significant money on the table for the week that is actually carrying the whole month.

My pricing for Christmas week is my highest of the year, above what I charge for peak July weekends. I require a minimum of five nights. This is not negotiable, and I stopped apologizing for it three years ago.

The five-night minimum does two things at once. It filters out guests who want to book December 31 for one night and treat your cabin like a party venue. And it fills your calendar with the Christmas Escapees who want a real retreat. A two-night booking over New Year’s Eve leaves a gap on either side that is nearly impossible to fill and runs up your per-turn costs. Five nights solves that problem before it starts.

I have never had a Christmas Escapee balk at the five-night minimum. If anything, they are relieved. They want the whole week. They were hoping you would let them stay that long.

If you are still dialing in your calendar settings for the holidays, I covered the specific minimum-nights strategy in the piece on the calendar setting most hosts get wrong before Thanksgiving. Christmas week is the clearest argument I know for setting a floor and holding it.

New Year’s Eve: The Booking I Regret and the One I Still Brag About

I have two New Year’s Eve hosting stories I tell other hosts. One is a cautionary tale. One is the reason I love this business.

December 31, 2021. I had a couple book the cabin. Good reviews, nice message, seemed straightforward. They said it would be just the two of them. I took that at face value. At 10 p.m. I got a text from my neighbor with a photo of fourteen cars parked along my private road. The guests were polite when I called. The party had started at 9. Nobody was destructive. The cabin was more or less fine in the morning.

But I had let twenty people into a property I thought was holding two, because I assumed “just the two of us” meant exactly what it said and I had not confirmed a thing beyond that.

Here is what I do now. Every guest who books Christmas week gets a personal message from me before arrival. I confirm occupancy, explain the quiet hours policy, and tell them specifically that it applies on New Year’s Eve. This is in my house rules already. The message is a reminder. It also signals that I am paying attention, which matters more than the message itself.

The second story is from December 29, 2023. A solo traveler, retired, booked five nights. She arrived with two bags and a small stack of books. She texted me on New Year’s morning to say she had watched the fireworks from the deck, made herself a proper dinner, and that it was the best New Year’s Eve she had spent in fifteen years. She left a glowing review. She has booked the same week every year since.

That guest is the Christmas Escapee at her finest. She knew exactly what she needed. I gave it to her. She gave me a standing reservation.

The One Thing I Wish Someone Had Told Me in Year One

If you are heading into your first Christmas week as a host, here is the advice I would give you, the advice nobody gave me.

Do not wait to feel certain before you price it right.

The instinct most first-year hosts have is to price conservatively because they do not have enough data yet. They lower their rates to attract bookings, then feel like they should lower them more when the week looks slow in October. This is exactly backwards. The guests who book Christmas week in mountain and cabin markets are not comparison-shopping the way June guests do. They are motivated. They made a decision to leave. They will pay your rate if your property gives them what they are looking for.

Set your minimum to five nights. Set your rates at the top of your range. Keep your checkout rules tight. Send a personal note to whoever books. Watch the Christmas Escapees show up and take care of your property like it is their own private retreat.

That week pays. I promise you, that week pays.

For current data on how mountain and cabin properties perform through December, the Gatlinburg STR market page has the occupancy and ADR numbers you need to benchmark your pricing. And if you are still building out your overall holiday strategy, I covered the full Thanksgiving and December picture in The Holiday Guest Rush Is Coming.

Loretta May Jenkins is a StaySTRA columnist and active Airbnb host. Her views are her own and reflect her personal hosting experience.

Last reviewed: November 14, 2026. Market data reflects StaySTRA December 2025 figures for the Gatlinburg, TN area.

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