“Pumpkins were floating. Wicker baskets were floating. Ribbon was floating. Even our hardwood floors were floating.” That was the scene Steve Pace discovered in his flower shop in Boone the day after Tropical Storm Helene hit Western North Carolina, just ahead of the peak season for the region’s tourism-dependent economy.
Merchandise was covered in more than 30 inches of water. It took Pace and his staff five days to clear out the water and mud in the shop.
Bouquet Florist was booked to supply flower arrangements for 20 fall weddings in Boone and surrounding areas in Watauga County. Just five of those brides decided to go ahead with their Western North Carolina nuptials after the storm.
“We are a big destination wedding locale up here,” Pace told Carolina Public Press. “A lot of the couples met each other going to school at Appalachian State, and then they come back to get married up here. They book the venues, and all the family comes and stays in the local bed and breakfasts or the local hotels.”
Destination weddings in the mountains are just one of the many kinds of tourism that sustain the Western North Carolina economy in the fall.
Many businesses in the region rely on the visitors who come for a glimpse of the autumn foliage to sustain them year-round. Western North Carolinians know that “when the leaves drop, the dollars drop.”
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There are other valuable seasons — ski season, summer break — but none compare to the cash flow of October. David Jackson, president of the Boone Chamber of Commerce, calls it “hibernating money.”
Now, that season is ending. Most people canceled their trips to the mountains on account of storm damage from Helene. The cost of repairing damage is draining savings accounts. Now, some small businesses are in very precarious positions.
If Bouquet Flowers can just make it until Valentine’s Day, Pace said, he knows they’ll be okay.
Tourism regional impact
Visitors to the region in the fourth quarter of 2023 spent $2.1 billion, Marlise Taylor, director of tourism research at Visit NC, the state’s tourism board, told CPP.
“If no visitor spending occurred in the mountains for the whole quarter, that’s what we estimate the loss would be after Helene,” Taylor said. “We know that may be a high number.”
The North Carolina General Assembly’s second Helene relief bill, which passed last Thursday, includes $5 million for Visit NC to promote tourism in the mountains.
Visit NC is working with an outside contractor to get a more accurate estimate of the region’s losses. It’s a complicated process, and not all the variables are cooperating. For example, they could normally use hotel vacancies as one way of measuring loss of tourism revenue. But hotels in the area have been booked solid for weeks, housing displaced families and emergency service workers.
Plus, not all visitor spending has completely disappeared.
In Boone, this past weekend’s home football game at App State coupled with the opening of a 20-mile section of the Blue Ridge Parkway brought a number of visitors back to the mountain town.
“We passed the first stress test, but you can’t make up for three weeks of loss with one great Saturday afternoon,” Jackson told CPP. “A really successful fall could have helped small businesses finally shake loose all of their COVID loans.”
The Boone Chamber of Commerce estimates that 67% of small businesses in the area are tourism-related. The chamber is distributing disaster-relief grants to small businesses in Boone. One of those businesses is Pace’s flower shop.
Leah Matthews, a professor of economics at UNC Asheville, told CPP that she was surprised to see that the downtown area of Waynesville, southwest of Asheville in Haywood County, was “packed” over the weekend.
Shifting to tourism message
Still, Corrina Ruffieux, executive director of Haywood County’s Tourism Development Authority, has serious concerns about the region’s economy. She is working overtime to shift the messaging from the post-storm ‘don’t come to Haywood County’ to ‘please come to Haywood County.’
“October is our No. 1 month, here in Haywood County and across Western North Carolina,” Ruffieux told CPP, “It’s No. 1 in visitation numbers, occupancy revenue and sales tax revenue.”
The stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway that runs through Haywood County remains closed. The scenic road is the primary reason people vacation in Haywood County, according to Ruffieux. In 2023, visitors spent more than $350 million at businesses in Haywood County.
“If you canceled your October trip, come in November or December to do Christmas shopping at local businesses,” Ruffieux said.
“We’ve gone from rescue to recovery to starting the process of rebuilding much faster than anyone thought we would. It’s really important for us to get the message out that it is safe to travel, and our small businesses really need you.”
Asheville’s challenges
In Asheville, and other tourist hubs in Buncombe County, that process is moving a bit slower.
Tourists in Buncombe County spent $2.97 billion in 2023, accounting for 20% of the county’s gross domestic product, according to Explore Asheville’s annual report. Tourists support 29,000 jobs in the county, and their vacation spending accounts for 12% of local income. The visitor economy generated $256 million in state and local tax revenues in the economy.
In other words, tourists are absolutely vital to Asheville.
“There is going to be an immediate, significant, and in some cases potentially catastrophic drop in revenue for some businesses in Asheville,” Matthews told CPP.
“But tourism has been a force in Asheville and Western North Carolina’s economy for more than 100 years. There have been other significant disruptions, and so I don’t think that this event will take Asheville out of the picture. This is a very resilient place.”
The losses to the area’s agritourism businesses may be the most dramatic, Matthews said. Apple orchards, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, farm stands and choose-and-cut Christmas tree companies are all examples of agritourism.
“It’s not just the downtown retail businesses whose livelihoods are threatened here,” Matthews said. “In fact, that agritourism economy might take much longer to recover, given the erosion and the deposition of flood mud onto the soils that these ventures depend on.
“Our small, independent, specialized ‘Mom and Pop’ businesses are why people come to Asheville. They are seriously threatened now.”
Asheville’s tourism board is trying desperately to tell folks across the state and country that despite the devastation, they should still book a trip to the city.
“There is a marketing and communication need to convey to potential guests that Asheville is open, accessible, and still an appealing place to visit,” reads a slide deck from Explore Asheville’s Oct. 30 board meeting.
The board is forecasting huge drops in lodging tax revenue, and heard a motion to waive Helene-related occupancy tax penalties for September, October, November and December lodging until June 2025.
The Biltmore House in Asheville is the largest privately owned residence in the United States. It’s one of the biggest tourist attractions across the entire state. It will reopen on Nov. 2. The estate has donated $2 million for Helene relief efforts.
Grandfather Mountain
Grandfather Mountain in Avery, Caldwell and Watauga counties is another huge tourism draw for Western North Carolina.
The Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation estimated a $1.5 million loss in ticket sales alone on account of the storm, Landis Taylor, a foundation spokesperson, told CPP. That loss will not result in any layoffs or reduction in accommodations on the mountain, according to Taylor.
“I know a lot of us that work up here were thinking about the mountain as we rode out the storm in our homes,” Taylor said.
“As trees fell around my house and bodies of water grew in size, I was very worried about the mountain and what was happening up here.”
The damage to the mountain was surprisingly minimal, according to Taylor. Since the weekend after the storm, the Grandfather Mountain Foundation has been engaged in charitable pursuits around Avery County.
The mountain reopened on Oct. 23. It could have opened much earlier, if not for the state of the roads in Avery County, Taylor said.
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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