Highlands, North Carolina Visitor Spending and Tourism: The Complete 2026 Market Report on Macon County's Luxury Mountain Investment Landscape

Highlands isn't a mountain town with a tourism problem. It's a luxury enclave with a capacity problem. At 4,118 feet of elevation on a plateau shared with Cashiers, Highlands sits inside one of the most concentrated pockets of affluence in the Southeastern United States — and the marketing math for short-term rentals here looks almost nothing like the math in Blue Ridge, Gatlinburg, or Asheville.

If you're researching Highlands NC STR investment, or if you already own a Highlands Airbnb and want to push it into the top quartile, this report is for you. We'll break down what Macon County's short-term rental data actually shows in 2026, how visitor spending flows through the town, where the performance gap between top operators and everyone else is widest, and what it takes to position and market a Highlands STR to capture the ADR this market can actually produce.

Why Highlands Plays By Different Marketing Rules

Most Southern Appalachian STR markets run on volume. Gatlinburg fills on family road trips, Helen fills on weekend Oktoberfest crowds, Blue Ridge fills on Atlanta weekenders chasing the Toccoa River. Highlands doesn't run on volume. It runs on wealth density.

The seasonal second-home population on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau — the summer residents who fly in from Atlanta, Birmingham, Naples, and Palm Beach — pushes the effective population from roughly 1,000 year-round residents to more than 20,000 between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Those residents import an economy. Private clubs, fine dining rooms charging $95-plus per entrée, galleries selling $15,000 landscapes, and specialty retailers who close for the winter and make a full year's revenue in 120 days.

Short-term rental demand here is a byproduct of that ecosystem. Visitors come because their friends bought houses on the plateau. They come for weddings at Old Edwards Inn. They come because their doctor told them summer altitude is good for their asthma and Naples is 98 degrees in July. The guest profile skews older, wealthier, and significantly less price-sensitive than any other market in the region.

That changes how a listing has to be marketed. Highlands guests aren't scanning Airbnb for the best deal in the $180-$250 band. They're scanning for the property that matches the rest of their trip — the dinner at Wolfgang's, the round at Cullasaja, the long afternoon on the porch with a glass of wine. Your listing either communicates that or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, the booking goes to someone who did it better.

Highlands Visitor Spending: Where The Money Goes

Macon County's tourism economy punches dramatically above its weight because of per-visitor spending rather than visitor count. Daily per-person spending on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau runs roughly two to three times the Southern Appalachian regional average, driven by four categories:

Lodging. Peak summer weekend ADRs at the Park on Main, Old Edwards Inn, and Half-Mile Farm regularly clear $700-$1,200 per night. Luxury STRs in the 3-5 bedroom range pull $650-$1,400 in July, August, and October. Mid-tier properties still command $350-$600 on peak weekends — higher than top-tier Blue Ridge nightly rates.

Food and beverage. Wolfgang's, Madison's at Old Edwards, Ristorante Paoletti, Lakeside Restaurant, and a half-dozen other fine dining rooms move peak-season covers at price points that would be unsustainable in Asheville. Average peak-season dinner-for-two with wine: $180-$280. Lunch still clears $60-$90 for two.

Retail and galleries. Main Street Highlands carries boutiques selling $400-$1,800 cashmere, jewelers moving $5,000-$40,000 pieces, and galleries where a single painting transaction can exceed a household's entire annual Highlands grocery budget. Seasonal retailers make more than half their annual revenue in July and August alone.

Recreation and services. Greens fees at Highlands Falls Country Club, Cullasaja Club,

Wildcat Cliffs, and Old Edwards Club run $150-$350 for non-members. Private guides for hiking, fly-fishing on the Cullasaja and Horsepausture rivers, and waterfall tours book out weeks in advance at $400-$800 per half-day.

The implication for STR marketing is direct: your guests arrive with money already allocated to spend. Your listing has to read like it belongs inside that trip — not apologize for being the cheapest option on the plateau.

The Macon County Short-Term Rental Data Reality

Here's where most research on Highlands goes off the rails. People pull aggregate Macon County STR data, see a mid-range county-wide ADR of $280-$340, and conclude the market is comparable to other North Carolina mountain counties. It's not. The Highlands-Cashiers Plateau accounts for 60-70% of the county's STR revenue despite holding only a small fraction of its listing count.

Filter to the Highlands zip code (28741) and the picture changes entirely:

• Top-quartile annualized revenue: $145,000-$240,000

• Median well-operated annualized revenue: $85,000-$135,000

• Median under-operated annualized revenue: $42,000-$68,000

• ADR spread between top quartile and median: roughly 2.3x — wider than almost any other NC mountain market

That spread is the entire point. In Highlands, two properties with the same square footage, the same bedroom count, and the same submarket can produce wildly different annual numbers. The difference is almost never the physical asset. It's positioning, photography, copy, pricing, response pacing, and review-response discipline.

This is a marketing story more than it is a property story. Which is good news for owners, because marketing is fixable.

If you own a Highlands STR that's performing in the middle of the pack and want a professional read on where your listing is leaving ADR on the table, book a Highlands listing audit with Crest & Cove. We tell you exactly what to fix, in priority order.

Seasonality Shape: Compressed Peak, Strong Shoulders, Real Winter

Highlands has a genuinely seasonal revenue curve, but the shape is more favorable than it looks on paper because the peaks are extreme enough to carry the year — if your marketing captures them.

Peak season (mid-June through mid-October) accounts for roughly 60-70% of annualized revenue. July and August weekend occupancy in the 3-5 bedroom category clears 85-92% for well-operated listings. ADR is typically $550-$900 for mid-tier and $900-$1,500+ for luxury. Midweek hits 65-78% occupancy at $450-$750 ADR.

October is its own mini-peak. Leaf season on the plateau pulls weekend ADRs close to July numbers with 88-94% Friday-Saturday occupancy. This is the one window where Highlands directly competes with Asheville and Blue Ridge for out-of-market leaf lookers, and Highlands holds its own because the foliage is genuinely spectacular. It's also the window where listing SEO matters most — guests searching "fall color North Carolina mountain rental" see dozens of options, and the properties that show up on page one pull wildly more revenue than the ones buried below.

Shoulder seasons (late April-May and early November) are soft but not dead. May weekends run 55-72% occupancy at $380-$600 ADR driven by Mother's Day, graduation, and early summer trial trips. Shoulder season is where positioning copy and seasonal imagery pull weight — guests in May are deciding between Highlands, Asheville, and home.

Winter (mid-November through mid-April, excluding Christmas/NYE) is the honest trough. January and February weekday occupancy can drop below 15% for non-differentiated listings. Christmas week and New Year's hold ADR near peak levels for properties actively marketed for it — fireplaces, hot tubs, holiday-ready furnishings, professionally lit, ski-adjacent positioning (Sapphire Valley is 20 minutes away).

The implication: winter is where under-marketed properties hemorrhage, and where professionally marketed properties still clear $18,000-$35,000 of shoulder revenue. Your annual number is almost entirely determined by how aggressively you compete for winter and shoulder bookings, because peak fills itself, and winter bookings are won by the listings that actually appear in off-season searches.

What Actually Performs: The Listing Profile That Wins

The Highlands, NC, Airbnb market rewards a specific combination of property profile and marketing execution, and punishes most others. The winning pattern:

Size: 3-5 bedrooms is the sweet spot. 2-bedroom cottages have ceiling problems (guest groups of 6+ are the highest-spending segment). 6+ bedroom estates have utilization problems (the group-of-12 traveler pool is thin).

Location tiers, in descending order of marketing ease:

Walkable-to-Main-Street (inside the town limits, under a mile): highest ADR ceiling, lowest marketing friction, copy almost writes itself.

Horse Cove / Dillard Road corridor (5-15 minutes from town, large lots, stream-adjacent or long-range views): requires more work in the listing copy to bridge the distance-to-town concern, but the numbers support it when positioned correctly.

Scaly Mountain / Shortoff / Whiteside Mountain flanks (10-25 minutes from town): cheaper entry, acceptable numbers if the listing genuinely sells the differentiation (views, architecture, privacy), weak numbers if the marketing tries to hide the distance instead of owning it.

Private clubs (Cullasaja, Wildcat Cliffs, Highlands Falls, Old Edwards Club): mostly STR-restricted by HOA. Verify rental rights in the CC&Rs before buying — this is where investor mistakes destroy the deal.

Photography and finish-level presentation matter more here than almost anywhere else in the region. A 2002-renovation property with brown cabinets, carpeted bedrooms, and a jetted garden tub can still perform — but only if the listing is honest about what it is and positions to the right guest segment. The trap is trying to list a dated property against fully-renovated competition at top-quartile pricing. Photos don't lie, and Highlands guests know what they're looking at.

Amenities that move the booking needle: Hot tub (table stakes), stone fireplace with real wood option, long-range view or immediate stream/forest setting, outdoor dining space, reliable high-speed internet for remote-work week-stays, EV charger (underindexed in listing copy, increasingly searched). Each of these needs to appear in the listing copy, in the photos, and in the amenity tags—not just on the property.

The Marketing Reality Nobody Warns You About

Highlands is operationally demanding, and the operational standard shows up in marketing before it does anywhere else. Three categories separate top-quartile Highlands listings from everyone else:

Want to know what's holding your listing back? Get a free STR visibility audit.

Listing copy and positioning. Most Highlands Airbnb listings are written by the owner, at the kitchen table, in about 40 minutes. It shows. The properties that pull top-quartile ADR have copy written for the guest that actually books Highlands — affluent, older, detail-oriented, reading the listing three times before making a decision. That copy leads with the experience, not the features. It names the specific neighborhoods, restaurants, and trails. It sells the trip, not the house.

Professional photography and visual merchandising. Highlands guests are not scrolling past a listing because the photos are slightly dark. They're scrolling past because the photos don't match what their friends' Instagram posts showed them Highlands looks like. Amateur photography caps your ADR at roughly 60-70% of what the property could actually clear. It is the single most common ceiling-imposer on Highlands listings, and the single most fixable.

Dynamic pricing sophistication. Static pricing in Highlands leaves $15,000-$40,000 on the table per year on a mid-tier property. The seasonal swing is sharp enough, and the event-driven demand spikes (Highlands Food & Wine Festival, plateau weddings, Old Edwards group buyouts, Bascom exhibition openings) are large enough, that manual pricing can't track it. Professional operators run PriceLabs or Wheelhouse with market-specific customization — not out-of-the-box defaults that treat Highlands like a generic mountain town.

Review response pacing and quality. Highlands carries a luxury-guest review expectation. First reply time under 15 minutes during daylight hours. Review responses written in full sentences, address specific feedback, and signal professionalism. This shows up in conversion rates for future lookers, which feed back into Airbnb ranking, which feeds back into impressions, which feed back into bookings.

If the gap between your current Highlands listing and a top-quartile listing is mostly copy, photos, positioning, and SEO — that's exactly what Crest & Cove handles.

 and we'll show you specifically what's costing you ADR.

Investment Context: What The Math Actually Says

If you're researching Highlands as a market to enter, here's the revenue side of the picture against representative 2026 pricing bands for investor-grade 3-4 bedroom properties:

Town-walkable, renovated, turnkey properties generally run $1.6M-$2.8M. Horse Cove/premium corridor renovated properties generally run $1.1M-$1.9M. Scaly Mountain / Shortoff renovated properties with a view or differentiation generally run $750K-$1.3M. Dated properties requiring renovation anywhere on the plateau generally run $600K-$1.4M, depending on lot, view, and bones.

Professionally marketed annualized gross revenue on those tiers typically runs $165K-$260K for town-walkable luxury, $125K-$195K for Horse Cove premium, $85K-$145K for Scaly Mountain differentiated, and $95K-$155K for renovated mid-tier broadly.

The gross-yield math puts most of these properties in the 7-11% range on purchase price before expenses and debt. That's respectable for a luxury market but not headline-grabbing — and the real story is the gap between top-quartile operators (clearing 6-9% cash-on-cash) and bottom-quartile operators (clearing 3.5-4.5% cash-on-cash) on identical properties.

We're a marketing agency, not an investment advisor, and we don't give financial guidance on whether a specific purchase pencils. But we'll say this clearly: the spread between top-quartile and bottom-quartile Highlands STR returns is almost entirely a marketing and operations spread, not a property spread. Two investors can buy the same house on the same street for the same price and produce radically different annual revenue. The difference is how the listing is built, positioned, photographed, copywritten, priced, and managed after the close.

Regulatory and HOA Landscape Worth Knowing Before You Buy

North Carolina does not have a statewide STR prohibition or cap. Macon County's unincorporated areas, where most of the premium inventory sits, are generally permissive. Occupancy tax is handled by Airbnb and Vrbo on a pass-through for hosts using those platforms.

The Town of Highlands itself has operational rules — business license requirements, occupancy tax registration, safety requirements — but no outright STR ban and no hard cap on licenses under current regulations.

HOA restrictions are the bigger risk. Private clubs (Cullasaja, Wildcat Cliffs, Highlands Falls, Old Edwards Club) have varying but generally restrictive rental rules — some require a 30-day minimum, while others prohibit STRs entirely. Outside the clubs, some smaller HOAs also have restrictions. The title work alone will not surface these. Get the current HOA CC&Rs in writing before closing.

Septic capacity also matters. Much of the plateau is on septic. A four-bedroom listed at sleeps-10 may have a three-bedroom septic system on the permit record. Verify capacity against your proposed max occupancy before listing at max — the listing copy needs to match what the property is actually permitted for.

Where Owners And Investors Most Commonly Leave Money On The Table

Five failure patterns repeat:

1. Amateur listing copy written by the owner. Highlands guests decide in 90 seconds whether a listing belongs in their consideration set. Generic copy ("Beautiful mountain getaway with stunning views and all the comforts of home!") fails every time.

2. Amateur or cell-phone photography. The single most common ceiling-imposer. A full professional photo set pays for itself in the first peak-season weekend it saves.

3. Under-differentiated positioning in a luxury market. If your listing reads like it could apply to any mountain rental in Western NC, it loses to the one that specifically names Main Street Highlands, the restaurants, the clubs, the trails, and the guest experience.

4. Static or out-of-the-box dynamic pricing. Generic pricing engines don't know about Highlands Food & Wine weekend, don't adjust for Old Edwards buyouts, and don't price the leaf-season spike correctly. Leaves $15K-$40K on the table annually.

5. Buying inside a private club expecting full STR rights. Separate category of failure, entirely avoidable with a careful CC&R review before closing.

Four of those five are marketing problems. One is a due diligence problem. The marketing problems are solvable — usually fast, and usually for less than the ADR they unlock.

2026 Forward Look

Three dynamics worth tracking as you evaluate Highlands STR positioning right now:

Supply is slowly expanding but constrained by land. Buildable lots on the plateau are genuinely limited. New construction happens mostly as teardown-rebuilds on existing parcels. Net STR supply growth is slower than in lower-elevation markets, which protects pricing power for well-positioned existing inventory — and means the competitive bar on listing quality is rising rather than falling.

Demand is broadening at the top end. The Naples-Palm Beach-Atlanta triangle feeding Highlands second-home ownership is expanding, and the secondary STR demand (friends and family visiting those owners) has been compounding. Luxury STR demand on the plateau has a structural tailwind, which also means the guest expectation bar keeps rising.

Listing SEO on Airbnb and Vrbo is more important than it was two years ago. The platforms have gotten better at surfacing listings that match specific guest intent — "luxury Highlands NC 4-bedroom with hot tub and mountain view" now pulls dramatically narrower results than it did in 2023. Properties with weak listing SEO simply don't appear in those searches, regardless of how good the physical asset is.

Bottom Line

Highlands is a premium market, operationally demanding, and one of the few Southern Appalachian STR markets where the top-quartile-versus-median revenue gap is wide enough that marketing and operations quality is the primary return driver.

The Macon County short-term rental data rewards precision. Get the listing copy right, the photography right, the positioning right, the pricing strategy right, and the returns follow. Get any of those wrong, and the returns disappear fast — even on the best property on the plateau.

Crest & Cove Creative is a marketing agency built specifically for STR owners and investors in the Southern Appalachian luxury mountain markets — Highlands, Cashiers, Asheville, Blue Ridge, and the surrounding corridors. We handle listing optimization, professional photography coordination, SEO-focused listing copy, direct booking site development, review response management, and ongoing marketing performance for STR portfolios on the plateau.

If you own a Highlands STR and want to push it into the top quartile — or if you're about to close on one and want the listing built right from day one — book a marketing audit. We don't do investment advice. We do the marketing work that turns median Highlands properties into top-quartile earners.

Start with a free visibility audit at crestcove.co/audit.

The Plateau Luxury Economy — Deeper Context

Highlands occupies a specific and unusual niche in the Southeast visitor economy. At 4,118 feet elevation, it is one of the highest-elevation incorporated towns in the eastern United States and sits on a plateau that creates a materially cooler summer climate than surrounding lowlands. This physical fact drives a distinctive demand pattern — Highlands’ summer season runs from roughly Memorial Day through mid-October, meaningfully longer than the standard Southeast mountain summer. It’s often called the "Plateau" for this reason, and the combination of cool summers, mature infrastructure, and long-standing wealth produces a guest economy that’s more stable and higher-ADR than almost any comparable Southeast mountain market.

The Macon County luxury tourism economy — which centers on Highlands and extends to nearby Cashiers — supports an estimated $280–$320 million in annual visitor spending across lodging, dining, retail, and recreation. Per-visitor spending runs approximately 2.2x the typical North Carolina mountain market, reflecting both the higher-income visitor composition and the longer average length of stay. This is not a market for budget operators; it is a market that rewards premium execution and punishes undercapitalization.

The Seasonal Community Dynamic

Highlands has a dual-identity population pattern that shapes the STR market in specific ways. The year-round population is approximately 950–1,050. The summer population expands to 12,000–15,000 — a 12–14x multiplier that ranks among the most extreme summer-home concentrations in the country.

The implication for STR operators is that Highlands is not a pure tourism market — it’s a seasonal-home market with tourism as a secondary layer. Primary summer residents own or long-lease homes for the season. Tourism overflow books STRs. This dynamic produces several distinctive patterns:

Longer average stays. Length of stay averages 3.8 nights, above most Southeast mountain markets and materially above any short-drive market.

Less weekend concentration. Because primary residents are in town all season, weekend-vs-weekday rate differentials compress. Tuesday occupancy at Highlands runs closer to Saturday occupancy than in markets like Blue Ridge GA or Banner Elk.

Lower winter demand. The seasonal-home population largely departs for warmer climates October–April. STR demand collapses in deep winter to 25–30% occupancy.

Concentrated May-October revenue. Approximately 78–84% of annual revenue lands in the May 15–October 20 window. This concentration is steeper than any other Southeast market we track.

Lodging Spend Composition — Hotels, Inns, and STRs

Unlike most Southeast mountain markets where STRs dominate lodging spend, Highlands has a robust traditional-hospitality layer. Old Edwards Inn & Spa, Half Mile Farm, The Park on Main, and several boutique inns capture a meaningful share of luxury-tourism lodging. The distribution:

Boutique hotel/inn lodging: approximately 38% of lodging spend. The highest share of any Southeast mountain market we track.

STR / vacation rental lodging: approximately 48% of lodging spend.

Traditional hotel / motel (limited): approximately 14% of lodging spend.

The robust hotel layer has implications for STR strategy. The STR market that wins in Highlands is the one that offers value the boutique inns can’t: larger groups, multi-room families, retreat gatherings, extended stays that hotel pricing makes prohibitive, or a specific property-character that hotel suites can’t match. Generic-cabin positioning against Old Edwards Inn’s brand is a losing strategy; differentiated positioning against hotel gaps is where STRs capture premium share.

The Dining Economy — $75–$90M in Annual Spend

Highlands has an unusually dense concentration of destination-restaurant infrastructure for a town of its permanent size. Wolfgang’s, Madison’s at Old Edwards, On the Verandah, The Library, Ristorante Paoletti, The Kitchen, Mountain Fresh Grocery — collectively these establishments generate an estimated $75–$90M in annual dining revenue. Per-visitor dining spend in Highlands averages $68–$82/day, among the highest in any Southeast mountain market.

The dining layer matters for STR operators in a specific way: guests book Highlands partly because of the dining. Listings that lean into the culinary-destination narrative — specific restaurant references, reservation-help concierge touches, wine-country-adjacent positioning — out-convert generic listings. The guest pool is willing to pay premium lodging rates because the overall weekend-spend is already positioned at a premium.

The Retail Corridor — A Sleeper Segment

Highlands’ Main Street retail corridor is one of the most-developed small-town retail environments in the Southeast. Art galleries (Highlands Art Gallery, The Bascom), home goods (Acorns, Hudson Library finds), women’s boutiques (Magee’s, Anna & Maude), antiques (McCulley’s, Scudder’s), and specialty shopping collectively drive approximately $35–$45M in annual retail spend.

This retail layer is under-discussed but relevant: it extends guest stays and expands the reasons-to-visit pool. A Highlands weekend is a dining, retail, and outdoor-recreation weekend, not just an outdoor-recreation weekend. The broader "things to do" narrative supports length-of-stay and repeat-visit patterns that single-asset markets don’t produce.

Want a free audit of your listing's visibility? Get your free visibility score to see exactly where your property stands.

STR Supply Dynamics — Where Growth Is and Isn’t

Active STR listings in Macon County’s luxury tier (Highlands + Cashiers + immediate surroundings) total approximately 425 as of Q1 2026. Up from 305 in 2022 — a 9–11% annualized growth rate, modest relative to Southeast peers.

Supply growth is concentrated in specific sub-areas:

Cashiers core (fastest growing): roughly 14% annualized growth. New builds and conversions accelerating.

Highlands core (moderate growth): 7–9% annualized. Constrained by limited developable land within walking distance of Main Street.

Glenville / Lake Glenville corridor (moderate): 10–12% annualized. Benefiting from lakefront positioning and slightly lower price points.

Sapphire / Toxaway corridor (slower): 5–7% annualized. Mature supply base; limited new inventory.

The supply growth pattern has specific implications. Investors considering acquisition in 2026 should weigh the Cashiers growth corridor (more inventory, more competitive pressure) against the Highlands core (less inventory, better pricing power but higher entry cost and limited value-add renovation opportunity).

Four Underserved Niches in the Highlands Plateau Market

One. Retreat-capable luxury large properties (10–16 guests). Corporate retreat and wedding-adjacent demand from Atlanta and Charlotte flows to Highlands consistently, but supply of genuinely retreat-capable large properties is thin. Meeting-ready gathering spaces, commercial Wi-Fi, catering-capable kitchens, and 10+ bedroom capacity commands materially higher ADR than generic "6-bedroom cabin" supply.

Two. Dog-friendly luxury. The luxury pet-friendly segment is underserved relative to guest demand. Most hotel luxury limits pets or imposes strict rules. Premium STRs that explicitly position as dog-friendly with on-property amenities (fenced yards, pet-wash stations, dog bed provisioning) capture a dedicated segment willing to pay full luxury ADR.

Three. Wellness retreat positioning. The plateau climate, the altitude-driven air quality, the quiet, and the dining infrastructure support a wellness-retreat product that current supply barely addresses. Yoga-retreat-hostable properties, spa-adjacent positioning, meditation-garden assets — listings built around this narrative command premium rates from a specific guest pool.

Four. Shoulder-season couples luxury. Late October and early May are the quietest windows in Highlands because primary residents have departed/arrived respectively and tourism is lower. Luxury couples-weekend positioning during these windows — with fireplace-and-hot-tub emphasis, restaurant-reservation concierge, and specific shoulder-season packaging — captures demand that defaults to more commercialized alternatives.

Operations Challenges Specific to the Plateau

Water infrastructure. Highlands municipal water is generally good, but outlying properties may rely on wells — and well performance at 4,000+ feet can be challenging. Verify water pressure and volume during due diligence on any Highlands acquisition.

Road maintenance in winter. Winter storms can close NC-106 and US-64 sections. The seasonal-home population largely departs before deep winter, but properties with year-round STR operations need a winter-access plan.

Property-manager scarcity. The premium nature of the Highlands market means qualified property managers charge premium rates (typically 22–28% of revenue vs. 15–20% in budget markets). Budget accordingly.

HOA and community-association friction. Many Highlands-area communities (Mountain Top, Highland Falls, Cullasaja Club, Sapphire Valley, Wade Hampton Country Club) have restrictions on short-term rental. Verify allowance in writing before any acquisition.

Insurance premium escalation. Wildfire and winter-storm risk modeling has increased premiums 18–30% over 2022 baselines. Premium luxury properties ($1.5M+) face the steepest premium increases.

The 2026–2028 Outlook

Highlands’ long-term outlook remains positive. The demand base is structurally wealthy and loyal, the geographic constraints limit over-supply, the seasonal-home community anchors the year-round economic base, and the luxury-dining and luxury-retail infrastructure continues to draw new visitors.

Risks worth tracking: insurance-driven affordability pressure could squeeze operator margins; macro-economic downturns historically affect luxury-travel demand more than budget demand; and continued supply growth in Cashiers could spill into Highlands pricing if not matched by demand growth. None of these rises to a level that fundamentally changes the thesis for well-capitalized, well-operated Highlands properties.

Opportunities: the four underserved niches above all have multi-year runway. The retreat-capable segment is probably the single clearest opportunity, given corporate-retreat demand growth out of Atlanta and Charlotte. Well-executed luxury operations in Highlands in 2026 look structurally more attractive than the median Southeast mountain alternative.