Autumn is usually the peak season for tourism in most of western North Carolina. Many enjoy “leaf peeping,” taking in the beautiful fall foliage along the mountains. However, the tourism industry in that part of the state was dealt a major blow in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
“October is the best, busiest, and most profitable month for the mountains in North Carolina, and much of that has been lost,” Wit Tuttell, executive director for Visit North Carolina, told Carolina Journal in a phone interview Tuesday. Visit NC is the state’s official travel marketing organization. He said that is especially true for Asheville and the Foothills, but summer is becoming busier for the rest of the area.
The direct impact the area took from Helene is in the billions of dollars.
“For the (4th) quarter, it’s more than $2 billion in direct visitor spending that gets spent in the mountains, and that was as of last year,” Tuttell said. “We would have estimated that that would have been the amount that would have been spent this year as well for the quarter, and that, of course, is not going to be anywhere near reached even if there are some areas that are open and available and have visitors coming in.”
He said it would be a tremendous loss in some areas and a complete and total loss in others and would be for months.
“Some areas where they are functional, and hosting first responders or evacuees, they’re doing that at a much lesser rate than they normally would have gotten,” Tuttell told CJ. “Even in areas where the occupancy may not look as hammered, the spending is going to be tremendously down.”
Are some parts of western North Carolina open for tourism? Yes, but…
Billboards popping up across the state say places like Franklin, Cashiers, Sylva, and Bryson City are open for business and need visitors. While that is true, Tuttell said there is one caveat.
“The challenge there is they’re six or seven counties out in the far western part of North Carolina in the Smokies area that are fine and ready to have visitors, and ideally, they would be hosting visitors from places like Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama,” he said. “Places where you don’t have to drive through areas that are still in recovery mode. And so that’s the key. The message to people in Raleigh and in most places in eastern North Carolina is not, hey, many of these places in the Smokies are open, head out that way; because what you don’t want is them going through areas that are under recovery and impacting the recovery.”
He said people from the eastern and central part of the state could still get to the Smokies, but they would have to drive to South Carolina and come back up into the Smokies or some other way that would add a significant amount of time to their trip. The focus for the organization right now is to help those in that area focus on the markets (Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Alabama) where travel is easy and doesn’t pose a risk to try and help them get business.
Others have also mentioned that Boone is open to having visitors, but Tuttell said that is considered a “yellow” or “proceed with caution” area.
“So, there are pockets that are available for people to go to and visit, and there are places that aren’t in what we would call the High Country,” he said. “So not just Boone, but in that area, some of the places that are open, they’re still busy hosting evacuees and first responders. So right now, we’re not encouraging people to travel to that area yet, but we hope that it’ll be back soon.”
He added that apart from the Smokies and places that have been absolutely devastated, they hope many other places will be able to host visitors as soon as November.
As with any enticing location, Tuttell reminds people to call ahead to their destination to make sure they get any special instructions, like what roads to take.
“We’re telling people if they are going out there call ahead, talk to the people where they’re staying to make sure what’s available, what’s happening, what the situation is because even places that are 5 or 10 miles apart can be completely different,” he said.
The website is updated daily with a travel advisory for western North Carolina. It includes an interactive travel advisory map, including highway advisories, and a link to drivenc.gov, the North Carolina State Department of Transportation highway map.