Managing the visitor experience is no easy task
I’m sitting alone in the cockpit of the boat anchored at Cape Lookout National Seashore off the coast of North Carolina in the early morning, and I’m about to write a column about tourism. Sipping my coffee, though, I’m distracted as a cool May breeze rattles the halyards.
Smokies spenders pump billions into local economies
A new National Park Service report shows that 13,297,647 visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 2023 spent $2.2 billion in communities near the park. That spending supported 33,748 jobs in the local area and had a cumulative benefit to the local economy of $3.4 billion.
Parkway visitation, spending grows
Visitors to one of the country’s most unique national park units pumped nearly $1.4 billion into local economies in 2023, continuing a growing trend that has powered rural Western North Carolina’s economy over the past decade.
