With crisp fall weather and gorgeous colors cascading through the mountains, it’s no wonder that October is typically one of the busiest months of the year for tourism to Western North Carolina.
In the year since Hurricane Helene devastated much of the region, it’s been an open question whether visitors would return. But some state and local officials say that after a difficult year, things have been looking up this fall.
“What is very heartening is hearing from local chambers, hearing from local businesses, about how they are creeping back up ever so close to where they were,” Matt Calabria, head of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina, or GROW NC, told reporters after a meeting last week. “And obviously, there are lots of variations — the region’s not a monolith — but we have seen a lot of forward motion.”
Over the summer, one of the region’s top tourist attractions — the Biltmore Estate — saw visitor numbers that were about 30% below pre-Helene levels, Calabria said during the GROW NC meeting. October’s numbers were only down 16%, he said — and the end of the year is expected to be even better.
Calabria said the rebound in visitor numbers represents “the fruits of a whole lot of marketing and tourism efforts” by state and local tourism boards. He also credited efforts by Gov. Josh Stein to get the word out about the region’s recovery, and the work of state Department of Transportation and National Park Service staff to reopen roads and major sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway before leaf season.
“We know we have a long way to go,” Calabria said. “We know that cash balances — not just on the local government side but in people’s bank accounts — are not what they used to be. And so, there’s a very long tail to this. There’s a lot of work to be done.”
The latest data from the Greater Asheville Regional Airport Authority also points to a return of visitors. Since April, the airport has seen more passengers each month than during the same period in 2023, which was a record-setting year for airport traffic.
While overall passenger traffic for this year is about 6% lower than where it stood last year, that gap is expected to narrow in the coming months.
