Sheridan County's lodging tax receipts fell 6.2% in Wyoming's 2026 fiscal year while the state as a whole rose 5.8%. Here is what actually happened in the Sheridan and Bighorn short-term rental market in July — and what the next five months look like.
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Sheridan County's lodging tax receipts fell 6.2% in the state's 2026 fiscal year, while Wyoming as a whole rose 5.8% and neighbouring Johnson County rose 10.9%. The local lodging market contracted. Nationally, 2026 has been a rate year rather than an occupancy year — short-term rental rates rose 6–7% a month through Q2 while occupancy barely moved. Meanwhile the average booking window has fallen to 60 days and AirDNA has cut its 2026 US supply forecast almost in half. Fewer new competitors, a shorter runway to sell each night, and a local market you now have to take share in rather than ride.
Wyoming publishes lodging tax collections county by county, which makes it one of the few honest, auditable proxies for how a whole local lodging market actually performed. For the state's 2026 fiscal year, ending 30 June:
| Fiscal year 2026 | Collections | Change vs. FY2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Wyoming statewide | ~$36.0M | +5.8% |
| Johnson County (Buffalo) | $427,431 | +10.9% |
| Sheridan County | $707,915 | −6.2% |
Sheridan County's collections had risen 9.9% the year before. This is a genuine reversal, and it sits underneath everything else in this report. Sheridan County Travel & Tourism's own framing for the year — "2026 is not about chasing growth, it's about capturing value" — reads less like a slogan against that number and more like a warning.
Rodeo week landed hard. Sheridan WYO Rodeo ran performances July 8–11, the Sheridan County Fair ran July 25 – August 3 on the back end of the month, and Sheridan set a new all-time record high of 109°F on July 12, breaking the previous 107°F mark — hot enough that the Rodeo Tailgate and Cowboy Polo Games scheduled for that day were cancelled outright.
Sources: Sheridan County Travel & Tourism Spring 2026 Industry Update (May 2026); Wyoming Dept. of Workforce Services, June county series (July 2026); Wyoming EAD / US Census population estimates (2026); Sheridan Media (18 Feb 2026).
Sources: Wyoming Office of Tourism / Dean Runyan Travel Impact Report 2025 (27 April 2026); Wyoming EAD lodging tax collections FY2026 (6 July 2026).
Sources: National Park Service (9 July 2026); Buckrail (18 July 2026); Colorado Sun (30 July 2026); SD DOT final vehicle counts (12 Aug 2025); AAA (retrieved 3 Aug 2026); EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (7 July 2026).
Sources: Deloitte 2026 Summer Travel Survey (19 May 2026); US Travel Association Travel Insights Dashboard, June data (28 July 2026) and Travel Price Index (14 July 2026).
Sources: AirDNA US 2026 Midyear Outlook (8 July 2026) and 2026 Outlook (16 Dec 2025); Key Data Dashboard Summer Index and Q2 channel mix (28 July 2026); CBRE Q2 2026 US Hotel Figures (29 July 2026); StaySTRA analysis of Key Data / Lighthouse / PriceLabs (2 April 2026); Deloitte (19 May 2026).
September and October are not a wind-down in this market. They're a different market.
Airbnb's 2026 Summer Release (20 May) rebuilt search around AI personalisation. Two guests looking at the same listing now see different amenity highlights and different review highlights depending on who they are. What decides which version a traveler sees is structured listing data — amenities, attributes, tags, photo labelling. Accuracy stopped being a courtesy and became a ranking input. Airbnb also began synthesising AI Review Highlights across a listing's entire review history, and now requires approval for custom house rules.
Vrbo tightened Premier Host in January 2026 to a 0% partner-cancellation rate, 99% booking acceptance and a 4.6 minimum review score, and is rolling out Sponsored Listings — paid search placement — before year-end. Roughly a third of Vrbo bookings in Q1 2026 already involved a supplier-funded promotion.
2026 is the year the software this industry runs on became agentic. Across the category, the major platforms shipped AI agents that execute inside operator-defined guardrails — pricing, guest messaging, operations, reviews — rather than simply recommending and waiting for a human. Several also opened their architecture for the first time, so an operator's own tools can plug straight into the system rather than working around it. Expect the gap between operators who build on that and operators who wait for it to widen quickly.
More than half of US travelers have now used AI to plan, book or navigate a trip. 33% use a general AI assistant like ChatGPT for trip research, a fivefold increase since 2024 — 74% among millennials, 72% among Gen Z — and 44% say they'd book directly inside an AI platform. Yet AI referrals are still under 1% of actual website traffic for independent hospitality businesses. Intent has moved years ahead of attribution. Travel and hospitality already has the highest AI citation rate of any industry, around 23% against a 6.8% average, because travelers demand sources for travel answers. (Phocuswright, 28 July 2026; Lighthouse via eHotelier, 7 July 2026; Similarweb, 29 July 2026.)
Three additions this summer, all for the same reason: a portfolio growing at this rate stops being manageable by good intentions and starts needing people whose full-time job it is.
Buffalo sits at the northern terminus of Interstate 25 where it meets I-90 — the only town in Wyoming where the north–south and northern east–west interstates converge — and it is the eastern gateway to the 47-mile Cloud Peak Skyway over Powder River Pass. Longmire Days (July 16–19) and the Johnson County Fair & Rodeo (July 24 – August 2) ran back to back this year: nine straight days of peak demand.
Two Wyoming ballot items touch property owners this November. Stated factually; we take no position on either.
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Sheridan County lodging tax collections on the state-imposed portion fell 6.2% in Wyoming's 2026 fiscal year, from $754,663 to $707,915, while statewide collections rose 5.8%. Neighbouring Johnson County rose 10.9%. Source: Wyoming Economic Analysis Division.
19% of Sheridan County's overnight visitors stay in a vacation rental, against 51% in hotels and motels and 30% in campgrounds and other lodging. Source: Sheridan County Travel & Tourism Spring 2026 Industry Update.
The average US booking window was 60 days as of spring 2026, down 11.4% year over year, and 38% of accommodation searches now happen within 28 days of arrival. Deloitte found the share of travelers with their main summer trip fully booked in advance fell from 39% to 35% in a year.
AirDNA cut its 2026 US supply growth forecast from 4.6% to 2.7% in July 2026, matching demand growth of 2.7%, and forecasts full-year occupancy of 57.4% — above the pre-pandemic baseline of 57.0%.
Archery opens 1 September across the Bighorn deer areas and most elk areas, with some elk areas opening 15 September. General rifle season opens between 9 and 15 October depending on hunt area. Antelope archery opened 15 August. Source: Wyoming Game & Fish 2026 approved regulations.
Yes. The City of Buffalo requires an annual short-term rental permit, treats short-term rental as a special use in the R-2 zone, requires registration with the Wyoming Department of Revenue before applying, and requires a local contact who can address issues within 24 hours. Unincorporated Johnson County has no adopted short-term rental regulation. Source: City of Buffalo Chapter 29 Zoning Ordinance.
About these figures. Every market, industry and economic figure on this page is attributed inline to its published source with a publication date. Where a source is a vendor survey or an on-the-books pacing snapshot rather than a finalised result, we have said so. Lodging tax collections reflect all taxable lodging in a county, hotels included, and are a market indicator rather than a short-term-rental index. Wyoming is a non-disclosure state; any listing figure is an asking rate. This report is published monthly on the first; past editions are in the Owners Vault. Nothing here is tax, legal, investment or voting advice.