Client Case Study · Casago network

Casago Yellowstone more than doubled its shoulder season book

Measured at the same point in the booking cycle, this portfolio is carrying $83,654 on the books for September through December against $40,311 a year ago. The gain came from filling nights that used to go unsold, in the months a Yellowstone-gateway portfolio normally goes quiet.

18 units · West Yellowstone & Island Park, Idaho and Montana · Client since February 2023
Shoulder season on the books
+108%
$40,311 to $83,654
Sep 1 to Dec 31 stays, booked on or before Aug 20 in each year. 16-home same-store cohort.
Nights on the books
+167%
90 to 240 nights
Same cohort and cycle point. Transient stays only.
October alone
7→49
nights, $2,876 to $16,577
October had been effectively unsold at this point in the cycle.
November and December
$7,221
from zero last year
No transient nights were on the books for either month a year ago.

A portfolio that lived or died on ten weeks

Casago Yellowstone sits at the west gate of Yellowstone National Park. Demand there is among the most concentrated in the country: the park draws visitors through the summer and the surrounding towns empty out when it ends. A portfolio of this size has very little room to absorb a soft season.

The revenue management problem is not peak summer, which largely sells itself. It is the months on either side, where a small operator can either accept an empty calendar or price deliberately enough to pull demand into it.

The off-season is no longer empty

Every month from September through December is carrying more revenue than it was at the same point last year, and the two months that had nothing on the books now have eighteen nights sold between them.

$37,435
$59,856
Sep
+60%
$2,876
$16,577
Oct
+476%
$0
$885
Nov
new
$0
$6,336
Dec
new
2025 on the books 2026 on the books 16-home same-store cohort, booked on or before Aug 20 in each year.
Bars share one scale.

September carries the largest dollar gain and October the largest proportional one. November and December are the clearest signal: a year ago this portfolio had not sold a single transient night in either month by this date.

This one was won on volume, not rate

Nights on the books rose 167% while average daily rate came down 22%, and revenue still more than doubled. In an off-season that is the correct trade. Rate discipline protects a peak week that will sell anyway. It does nothing for a November that would otherwise sit empty, where the only rate that matters is the one that converts.

90
240
Nights on the books
+167%
$448
$349
Average daily rate
-22%
$40k
$84k
Revenue on the books
+108%
2025 2026 with Pacer Sep 1 to Dec 31 stays, 16-home same-store cohort.
Panels measure different units and are scaled independently.

What Pacer changed

Three shifts behind the shoulder-season book.

Treated the off-season as its own strategy

Shoulder and off-season months were priced to convert rather than inheriting a peak-season rate floor that had been leaving October and November unsold.

Opened up length of stay

Off-season demand at a park gateway arrives as short trips. Minimums that protect summer weekends suppress the two-night November bookings that are the only demand there is.

Managed a small portfolio unit by unit

At 18 homes a single property moves the whole book, so pricing decisions are made per home and per date rather than by portfolio-wide rule.

Methodology

How these numbers were produced

Forward-book comparisons are easy to distort. Here is exactly what was measured.

Matched booking cycle

Both years are measured on the books as of August 20, so 2026 is compared against what 2025 had actually sold by the same date rather than against its finished total.

Same-store cohort

16 homes managed on or before Aug 20 2025 and still managed today, so the comparison is not inflated by portfolio growth.

Transient stays only

Stays of 28 nights or longer are excluded from both years. Two 30-day monthly rentals on one home accounted for all of last year's November and December nights, and counting them against this year's nightly bookings would not be a like comparison.

No market index

Forward market benchmarks are projections rather than settled results, so a market comparison at this cycle point would not be like for like. It is deliberately omitted rather than estimated.

Source: Pacer production database, core reservations, night-allocated, cancellations excluded. Figures as of August 20, 2026. Peak summer is measured separately and is not included in these figures.

See what Pacer could unlock in your Casago portfolio

Pacer is a preferred revenue management partner to the Casago franchise network. We can benchmark your portfolio against bedroom-matched market performance and identify where revenue may be leaking, before you make any commitment.