Vacation rental marketing for Red Lodge, Montana, built to fill more nights at a better rate: big log lodges for family reunions and ski groups, condos by Red Lodge Mountain, houses a short walk from historic Broadway and cabins up the Rock Creek and West Fork roads.
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* Market averages from AirROI data for Red Lodge, Montana, twelve months to September 2026 (published October 1, 2026). ROI is Cavmir's estimate. A single home's numbers depend on its size, its location and how it is marketed.
Cavmir is an Airbnb marketing agency. We build the brand, the direct-booking website and the marketing for short-term rentals in Red Lodge.
Red Lodge is a small city in Carbon County, Montana, built where Rock Creek comes out of the Beartooth Mountains. Broadway runs through the old downtown, and the Red Lodge Area Chamber of Commerce counts more than 23 buildings in town on the National Register of Historic Places. Red Lodge Mountain, the ski area, sits west of town on Ski Run Road, with its main base lodge at 7,433 feet and the summit of Grizzly Peak at 9,416. Bearcreek, an old mining town, is a few miles east, Roberts lies to the north, and the Rock Creek and West Fork roads lead up into the mountains. The city puts Billings, the region's business center, 60 miles north and Yellowstone National Park about 60 miles away, and Billings Logan International Airport is served by six passenger airlines: Alaska, Delta, United, American, Allegiant and Cape Air. The Beartooth Highway also starts in Red Lodge and climbs to 10,947 feet on its way toward Yellowstone, open only from Memorial Day weekend into early October.
Almost everything for rent here is a whole house. In AirROI's Red Lodge data, 99.6 percent of listings are entire homes: 74 percent houses, 15 percent cabins and about 10 percent apartments and condos. Fifty-nine percent of them have three or more bedrooms, 42 percent sleep eight or more, and size is where the money sits. The five-bedroom-and-up tier has a median of $75,000 a year, against $46,500 for four bedrooms, $33,900 for three and about $21,600 to $21,700 for one or two. AirROI's six top earners of the past year all have four to eight bedrooms and charge $805 to $1,131 a night, and the best of them, a five-bedroom log home with a mountain view, took about $230,900, roughly six times the market average. The market splits by where a house sits and who it's built for: big lodges for reunions and ski groups, homes and condos near the ski area, houses a few blocks from Broadway inside the city limits, and cabins up the creek. Each one sells a different trip, and inside the city each one also needs a registration certificate under a cap.
The calendar has two seasons, and summer is the bigger one. In AirROI's twelve months to September 2026, July 2026 earned the most per listing, about $7,400 at 58 percent occupancy and $373 a night, and April 2026 the least, about $1,935 at 23 percent. June through August ran at 52 to 58 percent occupancy, September 2025 still filled about 52 percent of its nights, and December 2025, with the ski area open and the holidays in town, brought in about $4,010 a listing. AirROI counts 97 percent of guests as American, and its top origin cities are regional: Billings first, with about 11 percent of guests, then Bozeman, Missoula, Helena and Sheridan.
What defines Red Lodge is the distance between the middle of the market and the top. AirROI's average listing takes about $37,300 a year at $320 a night and 38.6 percent occupancy, down 3.1 percent on the year while the count of active listings grew 21 percent, to 262; the Montana average is about $40,600 at $370 a night and 44 percent. The median listing charges about $265 a night and fills about 38 percent of its open nights, the top quarter $380 or more and 54 percent or more, and the top tenth $525 or more and 69 percent or more. In a typical month that works out to about $3,170 for the median listing, $5,050 or more for the top quarter and $7,600 or more for the top tenth. The houses at the top have a few things in common: enough beds for a group, a hot tub and a fire, a listing that sells both summer and ski season, and a calendar priced for each. All four can be built on purpose, and building them is marketing work.
Cavmir treats each Red Lodge home as a small hospitality business with its own guests: a log lodge that could host three generations of a Billings family every July, a condo near the ski area that a Bozeman couple might rebook for every opening weekend, a house off Broadway whose guests walk to the rodeo. Our work is getting your house seen by the people who choose Red Lodge deliberately, the family planning next summer around the Fourth of July rodeo, the ski group comparing lodges for a February week, the couple after a fire and a quiet stretch in March, in every place they look: Google, the AI assistants, the booking platforms and the past-guest emails that bring them home again.
Before Red Lodge existed, this valley was Crow country. The city's own history says the Apsáalooke used it each summer for worship, rest and hunting, and the Carbon County Historical Society traces how the large domain set aside for the Crow in 1851 was reduced by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and by land cessions ratified in 1882 and 1892; the Crow Nation's remaining territory today centers on Crow Agency, Montana. Red Lodge was officially established in 1884. Prospectors had come up the Rock Creek valley looking for gold and found coal, and in 1887 the Rocky Fork Coal Company opened the area's first mine. Hundreds of immigrants followed, Finns, Scots, Irish, Italians and Slavs, and settled in neighborhoods the historical society names as Little Italy, Finn Town and a Slavic end of town. At the height of the boom Red Lodge counted 20 saloons, and the Chamber's walking tour still stops at the site of the Sundance Kid's 1897 bank robbery.
Coal carried the town for more than half a century, then let it go. The West Side Mine closed in 1924, strip mining began in southeastern Montana in the 1920s, and for a time, by the city's account, locally made bootleg liquor replaced coal as the town's moneymaking export. In 1943 an underground explosion at the Smith Mine in Bearcreek, a few miles east of town, killed 74 men. It remains the largest mining tragedy in Montana history, and it effectively ended coal mining in Carbon County. Work on the road over the mountains toward Yellowstone had begun in 1931 and was finished in 1936, and by the middle of the century tourism, recreation and ranching had replaced coal; Red Lodge is still a working agricultural town. In 1951, a year after the Veterans Memorial Civic Center was dedicated, residents staged the first Festival of Nations there, a variety show of the town's ethnic backgrounds meant to bring back the closeness the community had felt before the war.
Two traditions shaped the visitor town that came next. The rodeo goes back to the late 1890s, when local cowboys rode exhibition broncs on Sunday afternoons at the railroad stockyards, and from the 1930s two families whose collection the county museum keeps, the Greenoughs and the Lindermans, left their mark on professional rodeo; many of them were later inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, and Red Lodge became known as the Home of Champions. The 2026 rodeo, July 1 to 4, celebrated 97 years. Winter belongs to Red Lodge Mountain: 1,635 skiable acres, 70 marked runs and 2,400 feet of vertical, with about 250 inches of snow in an average season, six chairlifts and two surface lifts. More than half of the marked runs are rated advanced or expert, snowmaking covers 28 percent of the trails, and the mountain says its snowmaking capacity is the second-largest in Montana. The Stache Express, a high-speed detachable triple, went in during the summer of 2023.
The rental market today is mid-sized, well run and still adding supply. AirROI's Red Lodge market holds 262 active listings, 21 percent more than a year earlier, averaging about $37,300 each. The city counts something narrower: its 2025-2026 short-term rental review found 206 registered rentals inside the city limits in 2026, about 10 percent of 2,022 residential units, with room for 404 under the cap. During that year the city issued 48 new certificates; 12 went to existing rentals that had sold to new owners, because registrations don't transfer, and 12 to units in the Chateau Rouge once they were registered one by one, while city staff counted at least 14 rentals that had become long-term rentals. AirROI's scan found no Red Lodge listing displaying a permit number, though it adds that local rules still apply, and the city requires the registration number on every hosting platform. When we audit a Red Lodge listing, we start with the gaps that lose money: a six-bedroom lodge priced like a three-bedroom cabin, a ski condo with no summer story, a house in town with no registration number in the listing, a hot tub that doesn't appear until the last photo, and no way for returning families to book without a platform in the middle.
Bedrooms set the price in Red Lodge, because groups pay for beds. AirROI's average nightly rates run from about $177 for one bedroom and $231 for two to $311 for three, $439 for four and $683 for homes with five or more, while occupancy barely moves with size, staying between 38 and 42 percent in every tier. That makes the big house the clearest lever in town: a five-bedroom median of $75,000 a year against $33,900 for three bedrooms, at almost the same occupancy. Market-wide, a median listing gets about $265 a night, the top quarter $380 or more, the top tenth $525 or more, while the bottom quarter sits at $205 or less. AirROI's amenity data shows what the high earners tend to have. Listings with a hot tub, just over half the market, averaged about $44,500 a year against $29,200 for those without; listings with an indoor fireplace, 71 percent of them, about $41,100 against $27,900; and the 6 percent with a sauna about $55,600 against $36,100. A grill and a patio or balcony show gaps of the same kind. These numbers belong to houses that happen to have the features, and those houses are often bigger too, so they don't prove the hot tub earned the money, but they show what a mountain guest expects to find.
Then there's the calendar. In AirROI's split of the year, the four high-season months from June to September average about $5,850 a month in revenue, with 56 percent occupancy at $334 a night; March and December form a shoulder at about $3,750, 38 percent and $300; and the six low months, January, February, April, May, October and November, average about $2,680 at 30 percent and $288. Rates move far less than occupancy: a typical July night costs about 26 percent more than a typical April night, while July fills about two and a half times as many nights. Guests book about 70 days ahead on average, about 115 days for July stays, meaning a typical July stay is booked around late March, and only about 38 days for January. Stays average 3.8 nights, running longest in May and shortest in October, and check-in at 4 p.m. with check-out at 10 a.m. is the usual pattern among listings that set times.
Two errors cost Red Lodge owners the most: one price for every night of the year, and fees that swell the total. A reunion of fourteen splits the bill several ways and compares the total with a block of motel rooms, so quote the house as a group product, choose a minimum stay that fits a family week in July, and spell out what a whole house offers a group that separate rooms never do: one kitchen, one table and everyone under one roof. Nearly all Red Lodge listings in AirROI's data, about 94 percent, add a cleaning fee, with a median of $189 and an average of $217; over a 3.8-night stay that's about $50 a night, roughly 14 percent of what guests pay in total. Seventy-two percent of listings set a two-night minimum, 16 percent allow a single night and only 9 percent require three, and two-thirds use a firm cancellation policy. Value is the lowest-scoring review category in town at 4.80, against 4.96 for check-in and 4.95 for communication, so guests are judging the full checkout total, fees and all, as much as the nightly rate.
Seasonality here is moderate, with summer on top and ski season second. In AirROI's typical year July earns about 3.4 times as much as April, and the best three months account for 41 percent of a listing's annual revenue. Summer opens with the Fourth of July: the Home of Champions Rodeo ran July 1 to 4 in 2026, with the rodeo and parade on July 2, 3 and 4, and the season kept its pace with the Beartooth Run on July 11, the Red Lodge Car Show on July 24 and 25 and the Red Lodge Renaissance Faire on August 1 and 2. September 2025 still filled about 52 percent of its nights at $315, and in 2026 the month brought the Labor Day Arts Fair, with more than 80 artists, on September 7 and Red Lodge Ales' 28th Oktoberfest on September 12. October fell to about 36 percent in 2025, and the Neighboring Nations Indigenous Arts and Culture Festival ran October 9 to 12, 2026. Two dates for next summer are already posted: the Red Lodge Songwriter Festival, June 17 to 19, 2027, and the 33rd Beartooth Rally, a motorcycle rally, July 15 to 18, 2027.
Winter is the second season, shorter and booked later. Red Lodge Mountain plans to open the 2026-27 season on Friday, November 27, 2026, and the Christmas Stroll fills Broadway on December 4 and 5. December 2025 brought in about $4,010 a listing at 36 percent occupancy, and January through March ran 26 to 35 percent, with January stays booked only five or six weeks out. Then comes the gap: April 2026 was the weakest month of the year, about 23 percent occupancy at $293 a night, and May recovered only to about 32 percent, although May stays run the longest. Most of the money owners leave on the table is in three places: midweek nights in ski season, which a five-night ski week or a weekday rate can fill; the April and May gap, when a weekly or monthly-style rate beats an empty calendar; and the fall weeks after Labor Day, when a couples' rate and a fire sell better than a family rate.
Montana taxes short stays at the state level and licenses them through its health department. Guests pay two state taxes on lodging: the lodging facility use tax, 4 percent of the sales price under section 15-65-111 of the Montana Code, and the lodging sales tax, another 4 percent on accommodations and campgrounds under section 15-68-102, which the seller collects and holds in trust for the state. Airbnb collects both on Montana reservations of 29 days or fewer, calculated on the listing price with cleaning and guest fees included, and the city's own checklist adds a lodging tax registration with the Montana Department of Revenue where one applies. The state Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) names short-term rentals, the kind listed on Airbnb and Vrbo, among the public accommodations it regulates under Title 50, chapter 51 of the Montana Code, and county sanitarians review the plans, so in Carbon County the first stop is the county sanitarian's office on West 11th Street in Red Lodge.
Red Lodge defines a short-term rental as a residential unit rented out for under 30 consecutive days, and its short-term rental page says they're currently allowed in any of its zoning districts. What limits them is a cap. Ordinance 963, passed by the City Council on August 23, 2023, allows no more than 20 percent of the city's residences to be short-term rentals and sorts them into three types: Type One, owner-occupied and exempt from the cap; Type Two, professionally managed, allotted 55 percent of the cap; and Type Three, all other rentals, allotted 45 percent. A 2026 amendment exempted onsite-managed and temporary short-term rentals too and brought the ordinance's wording in line with zoning and state definitions. The city's 2025-2026 review shows how much room is left: in 2026 there were 2,022 residential units, 404 allowed as rentals and 206 registered, about 10 percent, with 106 professionally managed rentals and 116 Type Two slots still open, 98 Type Three rentals with 84 slots open, and two owner-occupied. The rules have moved before. On October 24, 2023, the council held a hearing on a zoning proposal that would have allowed rentals only as an accessory use in the R3, R4, C3N, C3S and C4 zones, with the owner living in the unit 42 days a year, and voted unanimously to table it so the Planning Board and the committee could follow up. The city's page now describes rentals as allowed in every district; check whether that's still true before you buy.
Registration runs through the city's online portal, hosted by Deckard Technologies, and comes after three outside approvals. First, the Public Accommodations License: the county sanitarian reviews your plan, usually within three business days, then inspects the house, and you pay $150 to the Carbon County Treasurer for the review and inspection plus a separate state license fee; the license expires every December 31, a renewal notice arrives by email in October, and renewals are handled directly with DPHHS, not the county. Second, a short-term rental fire inspection by the Red Lodge Fire Department, requested with its checklist and good for one year from the inspection date. Third, a $500 resort tax bond, which the city requires of new businesses to make sure resort tax reaches it, paid through the city's business registration and tax compliance office. The portal then asks for the property's geocode, proof of ownership, the fire report, the health license, proof of the bond and an emergency contact who can respond to the property within 30 minutes of a call. City business registration costs $250 a year, renewals are due by July 1, and a certificate that isn't renewed by September 1 is terminated automatically. Approval belongs to the current host: a sale or transfer ends it, the buyer applies as new, and the city can revoke a registration whose rules aren't followed. The registration number must appear on your hosting platforms, and the city asks hosts to display its Be Bear Aware and Bear Smart Beartooth flyers and its Good Neighbor Policy at the property. Neighbors can report problems through an online form or the police non-emergency line; the city's review counted seven complaints in 2026, six of them about noise, and five of the seven came from one person about one home.
Red Lodge also has a resort tax of 4 percent on gross taxable sales by businesses inside the city limits, authorized by Ordinance 952, and short-term rentals pay it. It's filed and paid quarterly through the same portal, due by the 20th of April, July, October and January, or the next business day. The city's FAQ is direct about the platforms: Airbnb and Vrbo don't automatically collect and remit the resort tax to the city, so confirm whether your platform is set up to collect it, then report and pay through the portal; Airbnb's Montana list of local taxes it collects includes Big Sky's resort tax but not Red Lodge's. The city's review shows what the rentals paid: about $189,300 in resort tax for July 2025 through June 2026, against $195,000 the year before and $150,400 in 2022-23, with the July-to-September quarter of 2025 alone bringing in about $84,000. Registration fees go toward running the program, whose current cost the city puts at $95,942; in 2026 those fees brought in $51,500.
Outside the city limits, the written rules are thinner. Carbon County's Development Regulations, first adopted in 2016 and last revised on February 29, 2024, by Resolution 2024-15, govern all of the county's unincorporated land. They require a Group 1 development permit for any new residential use and a development or conditional use permit to change a residential or agricultural use to another use, but we searched the text for short-term, vacation, transient, lodging and rental and found no rule written for short-term rentals. Ask the county's Planning and Development office whether your plan counts as a change of use, and expect the state requirements to apply wherever the house sits: the Public Accommodations License through the county sanitarian and the two state lodging taxes. Homes in subdivisions near the mountain may also be bound by covenants or a homeowners association; we didn't review private covenants for this page, so read yours before you list. Read this section as orientation and not as legal advice, and check what's current with the City of Red Lodge, Carbon County, DPHHS, the Montana Department of Revenue and any homeowners association first. Cavmir's part is the marketing; registration, licensing and tax compliance remain yours to handle with local professionals.
First, market summer and winter as two different houses. The summer guest is a family or a group of friends coming for the Fourth of July, a reunion or a week in the mountains, and wants a deck, a grill, a bed for everyone and a list of day trips; in AirROI's data the grill and the patio show some of the widest revenue gaps in town. The winter guest wants to know how far it is to the ski area's base lodge, whether the driveway is plowed, where the boots dry and whether the hot tub is hot when they get back. Write two sets of opening lines and two photo orders, swap them in spring and fall, and keep a summer page and a ski page on your own site so each guest finds the version of the house that fits the trip. Price them separately as well: AirROI's high season averages $334 a night and the low months $288, and a house that holds its summer rate and sells ski weekends as events doesn't have to accept the average in either season.
Second, build the big house for the group that's actually coming. Forty-two percent of Red Lodge listings sleep eight or more, and the money concentrates there: the five-bedroom median is $75,000 a year, and AirROI's six top earners all have four to eight bedrooms. Reunions and multi-family groups need their own bed for each grown-up, bathrooms enough that six people can shower before breakfast, a table that seats everyone, parking for several cars and a kitchen that can cook for fourteen. Put the bed list in the listing and the floor plan on your site, and if the house sits outside the city limits, confirm with the county what your plan requires before you advertise. Give returning families first refusal on next year's rodeo week before it opens to the public, since July stays book about four months ahead.
Third, get the winter house ready before the first storm. AirROI's 26 to 35 percent occupancy from January to March leaves plenty of open nights, but the guests who do come want simple things done well: a hot tub cleared of snow, a fireplace any guest can light, a mudroom with boot dryers and a ski rack, winter driving advice in the welcome book, and clear directions to Ski Run Road for an arrival after dark. Keep the city's bear flyers where guests will read them, all year. Offer a midweek ski rate and a five-night ski week, leave winter dates bookable at fair prices late, since January fills only five or six weeks out, and promote opening weekend, the holidays and March to Billings and Bozeman, the two biggest origin cities in AirROI's guest data.
Fourth, work for the second booking, and run the house so it markets itself. Red Lodge guests are used to very good stays: AirROI's Red Lodge listings average 4.91 stars, 73 percent hold Airbnb's Guest Favorite badge, 68 percent are run by Superhosts and almost half the market is professionally managed, while the average listing shows only 11 photos, so a full, current photo set stands out. Billings is 60 miles away, and its families come back when you give them a reason: a direct-booking website that loads quickly on a phone and shows the bed list and the summer and ski calendars, and an email list of past guests who get rodeo week, opening day and the Christmas Stroll before anyone else. About 64 percent of the market uses Instant Book, so if you don't, answer inquiries fast. Operations count too: the registration number in every listing, an emergency contact who really can reach the house within 30 minutes, a guest count that matches your license, and a self check-in a family can manage at 10 p.m. in a snowstorm.
Inside the city, regulation caps the supply and decides what a buyer actually gets. The 20 percent cap still had room in 2026, with 116 professionally managed and 84 general slots open, but slots are counted by type, a certificate ends when the house sells, and a buyer applies as a new host. Don't price a house as if the seller's registration comes with it. Budget the fire inspection, the health license, the bond and the weeks it takes to register, and check how many slots remain in your type before you close. Watch the council as well: the 2023 zoning proposal that would have limited rentals in five zones was tabled rather than voted down, and the ordinance was amended again in 2026.
The mountains ask for preparation. Snow, cold and long drives shape every winter stay, bears are common enough that the city asks each rental to post bear-awareness flyers, and the city enforces a floodplain ordinance for any work in the Special Flood Hazard Area, with a permit approved before work begins. Carry insurance that covers all three, look up your address on the FEMA flood map, and put winter driving and bear-safe habits in the welcome book in plain words. Absentee owners in Billings, Bozeman or another state have one more risk: a house run from a distance slides slowly, the photos age, replies slow down and nobody prices April. A local operations partner who visits the house and marketing that's refreshed every season keep that from happening.
The competition is capable and getting crowded. AirROI's active listings rose 21 percent over the year, yet each listing earned 3.1 percent less on average, and the city's resort tax from rentals slipped from about $195,000 in 2024-25 to $189,300 in 2025-26. The top ten hosts run 52 percent of the listings, and a typical month pays a top-quarter listing at least 2.8 times as much as a bottom-quarter one. More houses chasing a steady pool of guests rewards the ones that stand out on product and presentation, and the generic listings feel it first.
A Red Lodge rental needs a policy written for a mountain house that hosts strangers: either a homeowner policy that allows renting by the night or a policy written for rentals, liability limits that fit a group of fourteen, a review of snow load, frozen pipes and wildfire exposure, and flood insurance if the lot is inside a mapped flood hazard area; the city points owners to FEMA's Map Service Center to check an address. Tell the carrier the house is rented, and if a hot tub, sauna or wood fireplace is part of the pitch, make sure the policy and the fire inspection both account for it.
The IRS and Montana both tax the rental income. Guests pay Montana's 4 percent lodging facility use tax and 4 percent lodging sales tax, which Airbnb collects on its Montana stays of 29 days or fewer, and inside the city limits the 4 percent resort tax, which the city says platforms don't automatically remit, so plan to report and pay it quarterly through the city portal unless you confirm otherwise. Take a booking directly and you collect and file all of it yourself. Ask the Montana Department of Revenue, which handles property assessment for the county, how your house will be classified for property tax once it's rented, before you build the budget, and use an accountant in Montana who already files for short-term rental owners.
Lenders here are ordinary banks and mortgage companies, but the loans run large: big lodges often need jumbo financing, the rate depends on whether the house counts as a second home or an investment property, and an underwriter will want revenue modeled by season, summer and ski, rather than one monthly figure. Zillow's typical Red Lodge home value was about $519,600 at the end of September 2026, up 2.3 percent from a year before; Zillow's median list price that month was about $667,300, with 72 homes on the market. Underwrite the registration too: inside the city it ends at sale and the cap counts slots by type, so model the purchase both with a new certificate and with a wait for one.
The reasons people come to Red Lodge are durable ones. The ski area's terrain, its snowmaking and a lift added in 2023 give winter a base, the Fourth of July rodeo has run for 97 years, the historic downtown and the county museum give visitors a full rainy day, and Billings is 60 miles away with an airport served by six airlines. The town has already lived through the end of its first economy and built a second one on visitors, ranching and recreation. Not one of those draws depends on where a platform's algorithm ranks your listing this month.
Three things deserve watching: the rules, the taxes and the number of competing listings. The cap had room in 2026, but the ordinance was amended that year, the 2023 zoning idea could return, and a certificate still ends when a house sells. The resort tax has to be filed by hosts unless the platform is set up to collect it, the state's two lodging taxes add 8 percent to every quoted total, and listings grew 21 percent in a year. Review insurance and carrying costs on a mountain house once a year as well. A well-run rental can absorb all of it, and owners who treat the house as a business absorb it best.
Search is changing too. More travelers now ask an AI assistant or search directly for a place to stay instead of scrolling a platform, and the houses those answers recommend are the ones that publish clear, structured, specific information: the bed list for a reunion, the drive to the ski area's base lodge, the hot tub and the fireplace, the registration number, the summer and winter offers and a site that loads fast enough for an assistant to read. We explain how to lay a mountain house out for those assistants in our article on generative engine optimization. Red Lodge's reunion planners and ski groups ask very specific questions months ahead, and the houses that answer them clearly today will be the ones those assistants keep naming.
Red Lodge sells best when you simply tell guests what's here. There's a ski area with 2,400 feet of vertical just west of a historic downtown, a rodeo with 97 years behind it, a museum with a walk-through mine in its basement and a brewery on Broadway. A listing that lays out exactly what the house has, instead of stock mountain-cabin copy, draws a guest who wanted this town specifically, and who tends to come back and treat the place with care.
What I love about working on Red Lodge houses is the way the year splits in two. July belongs to reunions, the rodeo parade and long evenings on the deck, December to opening weekend and the lantern walk down Broadway, and March to the ski group that wants big snow and a hot tub without the holiday crowds. Owners who split one all-purpose listing into a summer house and a winter house usually find empty nights and missing rate they can win back through better marketing.
And the raw material is generous. A coal town that turned to bootlegging, a mine disaster that ended coal in the county, two rodeo families with members in the ProRodeo Hall of Fame, a festival begun in 1951 to pull a town of Finns, Italians, Scots and Slavs back together after the war, and a Christmas parade of snowplow blades give a host far more to tell than any listing has room for. Inventing a story for a Red Lodge house is almost never necessary. The work is finding the real one the owner has lived with so long they've stopped noticing it, saying it simply, and showing it to the guests who are searching for precisely that.
The picks Cavmir puts in a Red Lodge welcome book: places a well-traveled guest would be glad to find on their own, the kind of local knowledge that turns a good stay into a five-star review.
At 224 Broadway Avenue North, open Thursday through Saturday, 10 to 4; general admission is $5 and children under 6 are free. The basement is a walk-through simulation of the county's mining past, the rodeo collection follows the Greenough and Linderman families, and an exhibit covers the Crow people, whose country this valley was. The best rainy-afternoon hour in town.
The restaurant in the historic Pollard Hotel at 2 North Broadway serves hearty, made-in-house American breakfasts and lunch every day from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the hotel bar mixes craft cocktails Tuesday through Saturday from 4 to 8 p.m. An easy first breakfast for guests who arrive late the night before.
At 1445 North Broadway, open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Its Glacier Amber Ale won gold at the 2021 North American Beer Awards, its pilsner cold-ages for eight weeks, and the brewery's 28th Oktoberfest was held on September 12, 2026. A good first evening out for a group.
Rock Creek Resort, at 6380 US Highway 212 in the foothills of Beartooth Pass, calls Old Piney Dell one of Montana's original supper clubs. Send couples there for an anniversary dinner and groups for a night someone else cooks, and suggest they reserve ahead.
1,635 skiable acres, 70 marked runs, 2,400 vertical feet and about 250 inches of snow in an average season, with more than half of the runs rated advanced or expert. The 2026-27 season is set to open on Friday, November 27, 2026, and the mountain says it keeps normal hours on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's.
Run by Red Lodge Mountain on Ski Run Road, on 160 acres with a slope rating of 126. The season usually opens in mid-May and runs into early October, and 28 Peaks Kitchen at the course serves Montana fare with a full bar and a patio for after the round.
At 14 West Main Street in Bearcreek, a few miles east of town, where the Smith Mine explosion killed 74 men in 1943, the largest mining tragedy in Montana's history. A drive out for dinner pairs well with an hour at the county museum first, so guests know the story of the place they're eating in. Its hours follow the season, so tell guests to call ahead.
The rodeo ran July 1 to 4 in 2026, its 97th year, with the rodeo and parade on July 2, 3 and 4. It grew from Sunday-afternoon bronc riding at the railroad stockyards in the late 1890s. Rodeo week is the most valuable week of the year for most houses in town; book returning families first.
Set for Friday and Saturday, December 4 and 5, 2026. Shops on Broadway stay open until around 9 p.m., the Blade Parade of decorated snowplow vehicles starts at 6 p.m. both nights, the community lantern walk goes down Broadway on Friday, and horse-drawn wagon rides run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Broadway closes to cars between 8th and 14th Streets from 4 p.m.
A clay arts center with a Loft Gallery, a featured artist and a residency program; its shows change through the year, and October 2026 brought the exhibition Finding the Ground and featured artist Samuel Johnson. A good stop between lunch on Broadway and the brewery, and a reason to talk about craft rather than chairlifts for an afternoon.
Three days of songwriters in June; the 2027 festival is set for June 17 to 19. It lands just before the summer rush, which makes it a good weekend to sell to couples and small groups from Billings and Bozeman before rodeo week fills the calendar.
Three property types that do well in Red Lodge, a common starting point for each, and the plan Cavmir builds for it.
A big log house up the valley that sleeps sixteen but lists as a 'cozy cabin,' shows its hot tub and sauna at the end of the photo set, prices rodeo week like any July week, fills ski season only at the holidays and has never confirmed what the county requires outside city limits.
Confirm the county's answer on a change of use, the Public Accommodations License and the guest count first, then rebuild the listing around reunions and ski groups: a bed list showing where every adult sleeps, the big table and the kitchen, the hot tub and sauna in the first photos, the drive to Red Lodge Mountain's base lodge with winter road notes, a four-night July minimum with rodeo week priced as an event, and first refusal on next year's dates for every family that stays. Add a direct-booking site and a February ski-week offer for Billings and Bozeman groups.
Built to raise the group rate in July and to fill ski weeks beyond the holidays. Track rodeo-week and July rates, January to March occupancy, inquiries from groups of ten or more, repeat family bookings and the share booked direct.
A registered house inside the city limits that never says how close it is to Broadway, shows no registration number in its listing, charges a cleaning fee that doubles the cost of a two-night weekend and goes quiet after Labor Day and again in April.
Confirm the certificate's type, the July 1 renewal and the resort tax setup first, and put the registration number in every listing. Then reposition it as the walk-everywhere base: minutes on foot to Broadway, the brewery and the museum, offers built for rodeo week and the Christmas Stroll, a fall couples' rate with the fireplace in the first photo, a cleaning fee folded into a fair weekend total, and a direct-booking page that ranks for downtown Red Lodge searches.
Aimed at more event-weekend revenue, fuller shoulder months and better value scores. Measure rodeo-week and December rates, September to November and April to May occupancy, the value score in reviews and direct bookings from returning Billings guests.
A ski condo that markets itself only in winter, says nothing about the golf course, disc golf or summer evenings, uses the same photos it had when it was bought and has never checked what its homeowners association allows for short-term stays.
Read the association's rules and confirm the registration and tax position for the address first. Then sell two products: ski weekends and five-night ski weeks with boot storage and the walk or drive to the lifts in plain words, and a summer base for golf at the mountain's course, the Fourth of July and the Songwriter Festival. Refresh the photo set, add a midweek ski rate, and build a past-guest list that hears about opening day first.
Designed to add summer revenue to a winter-only unit and to fill midweek ski nights. Track June to September occupancy, midweek winter nights, opening-weekend bookings, repeat guests and how many stays run four nights or longer.
Yes. Cavmir helps owners in Red Lodge and across the surrounding Carbon County land, from houses near Broadway and condos by Red Lodge Mountain to lodges and cabins up the Rock Creek valley. For a Red Lodge house that means brand, listing copy, photo direction, a direct-booking website, SEO and paid ads, shaped around the three kinds of stay this town sells: big log lodges, ski condos and walkable houses near Broadway. Cavmir is the marketing side only; you or your local manager keep running the house day to day.
For the twelve months to September 2026, AirROI's Red Lodge average comes to about $320 a night at 38.6 percent occupancy, roughly $37,300 a year per listing, 3.1 percent less than the year before while listings grew 21 percent. Earnings vary a lot: a median listing makes about $3,170 a month, a top-quarter listing $5,050 or more, and the five-bedroom-plus homes reach a $75,000 median a year. Those are averages across the market rather than a projection for any one house, and a particular house lands above or below them depending on its size, its presentation and how well it's priced.
Summer, with July the top month and June through August running 52 to 58 percent occupancy in 2026. The Fourth of July rodeo is the biggest week, September stays busy with the Labor Day Arts Fair and Oktoberfest, and winter forms a second, smaller season once Red Lodge Mountain opens, which it plans to do on November 27, 2026. April is the quietest month, and January through March bookings tend to arrive late, with January stays made only about 38 days ahead.
Yes. Inside the city, every short-term rental needs a city registration certificate, issued after a state Public Accommodations License, a fire inspection and a $500 resort tax bond, and Ordinance 963 caps rentals at 20 percent of the city's residences, split by type. The certificate costs $250 a year, renews by July 1 and ends when the house is sold. Outside the city, Carbon County's development regulations don't name short-term rentals, but the state license and state lodging taxes still apply. Check the current rules with the city, Carbon County and the state before you list; Cavmir's role is marketing, and we don't advise on law or permits.
Partly. Airbnb collects Montana's 4 percent lodging facility use tax and 4 percent lodging sales tax on reservations of 29 days or fewer, including cleaning and guest fees. The City of Red Lodge's 4 percent resort tax is different: the city says Airbnb and Vrbo don't automatically collect and remit it, so confirm your platform's setup and report and pay it quarterly through the city's portal. For direct bookings, all three taxes are yours to collect and report.
In 2026 there was. The city's review counted 2,022 residential units, a cap of 404 rentals and 206 registered, with 116 slots still open for professionally managed rentals and 84 for all other rentals; owner-occupied rentals are exempt. Slots are counted by type and the numbers change every year, so ask the city for the current count before you buy. See vacation rental SEO for how a new listing gets found once it's registered.
You can buy the house, but the registration doesn't come with it. Red Lodge's approval belongs to the current host, and a sale or transfer ends it, so the buyer applies as a new host, inside the cap for their type, with the health license, fire inspection and resort tax bond paperwork a new application asks for. In 2025-26, 12 of the city's 48 new certificates went to existing rentals that had changed hands, so budget the time and the fees into your offer.
That depends on what the house needs, a listing rebuild before rodeo week or a full summer-and-ski program. You'll find monthly plans and one-off projects on our pricing page; a listing overhaul before summer, or the 12-step system, is a common place for a Red Lodge owner to start. To talk through your own house, at no charge, get in touch with Cavmir.
Send us the listing and we'll tell you what we'd change. Not a pitch deck — a straight read on your photos, your title, your rates against the Red Lodge comp set, and whether a direct-booking site would pay for itself.
You'll hear back from a person, usually inside one business day. If we don't think we can move your numbers, we'll say so. Cavmir is a short-term rental marketing agency — we position and market properties, we don't manage them.
Demand in Red Lodge peaks around July and runs quietest around April. Here is how the year actually books — and what to do about each stretch of the calendar.
Summer is the peak in Red Lodge. July is the strongest month of the year, June through August run the highest occupancy, and the Fourth of July rodeo week is the single most valuable week on the calendar. July stays book furthest ahead, close to four months out, so have summer photos, the bed list and rodeo-week pricing set by early spring and hold firm multi-night minimums on the best weeks.
September stays busy after the families go home, with the Labor Day Arts Fair and Red Lodge Ales' Oktoberfest, and December forms a second shoulder once Red Lodge Mountain opens and the Christmas Stroll comes to Broadway. Sell a fall couples' rate with the fireplace in the first photo, price opening weekend and the holidays as events, and offer midweek ski rates and five-night ski weeks from January to March.
April is the quietest month of the year, with January, February and November next. Guests book late in the off months, often only five or six weeks ahead, so keep pricing open, offer weekly rates for the long May stays, and use the April gap to refresh photos and send next summer's dates to past guests first.
Guests book a little over two months ahead on average. Summer books furthest out, with July stays arriving close to four months early, usually in late March, while January stays come in only five or six weeks ahead. Have summer ready by early spring, open rodeo week to past guests first and keep winter pricing flexible for late planners.
Most stays run a long weekend to about four nights. They're longest in May and shortest in October, and summer weeks for big groups and ski weeks in winter stretch longer than the in-town weekend stays.
The winner is a big house built for groups: five or more bedrooms, a hot tub and a fireplace, with a listing that sells both a summer reunion and a ski week. Inside the city, houses a short walk from Broadway win on events and weekends, and condos near Red Lodge Mountain win when they sell summer as well as ski season instead of going dark from April to November.
Start by naming your product, a big lodge for reunions and ski groups, a house a short walk from Broadway or a condo near Red Lodge Mountain, and sell that advantage in the title and the first photos. Market summer and winter as two versions of the house, price the Fourth of July rodeo and the holidays as events, and build midweek ski and weekly spring rates. Add a direct-booking site and a past-guest email list so returning families from Billings and Bozeman can rebook you directly. That's the marketing layer Cavmir builds for owners here: photography direction, listing copy, a direct-booking website and local search.
Summer is the peak, with July the strongest month and June through August the busiest for occupancy. September stays busy with the Labor Day Arts Fair and Oktoberfest, ski season adds a second, smaller season from December to March, and April is the quietest month of the year.
A little over two months ahead on average. Summer books furthest out, with July stays arriving close to four months early, while January stays book only five or six weeks ahead. Have summer ready by early spring and keep winter pricing open for late planners.
Montana leads: Billings, about 60 miles north, is the top origin city by a wide margin, followed by Bozeman, Missoula and Helena, with Sheridan close behind. Fly-in guests use Billings Logan International, served by six airlines; the guest data doesn't show where they fly from, but its airlines include United, Delta, Alaska and American, whose hubs in cities such as Denver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Seattle are the likely connections.
A hot tub and an indoor fireplace lead; listings with either earn well above those without in the market data, and a sauna, a grill and a deck help too. Groups add their own list: a bed for every adult, enough bathrooms and parking, and in winter a plowed driveway and a place for skis and wet boots. Fast wifi matters for longer stays.
Run your Airbnb, Vrbo, or website through Cavmir's free grader. It checks the things that decide whether guests book in Red Lodge — photos, listing copy, page speed, local search — and shows you where bookings leak. Takes about a minute, and there's no sales call attached.
If the report says your booking engine is the weak link, that's fixable: a direct-booking website of your own means repeat guests stop paying platform fees to come back to you. That's the work Cavmir does — see Airbnb website design in Red Lodge.
Talk to Cavmir today. We'll show you exactly what your Red Lodge property is leaving on the table — and how fast we can change that.
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