More than 180 guests attended the event at the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium.
Tag: tourism
Showing 43-63 of 161 results
Letter: A message from the heavens about Asheville
“One way or another, the Great Being in the Sky will persuade people, mostly Floridians, that Asheville isn’t the haven they once expected.”
Letter: Support needed for environmental justice bill
“Western North Carolina will soon experience environmental degradation because of our legislators’ inability to act on climate policy.”
Q&A with Demp Bradford, president of the Asheville Buncombe Regional Sports Commission
Certain activities are closely associated with Asheville: sampling local craft brews, tubing down the French Broad River, eating one’s own weight in barbecue. If Demp Bradford, president of the Asheville Buncombe Regional Sports Commission, has his way, professional sports will become quintessentially Asheville, too. Bradford, a native of the North Carolina Piedmont, became interested in […]
Letter: Tourism dollars should help with infrastructure
“Tourism dollars should be helping with the infrastructure of the city. To continue to put the burden on taxpayers living here is unfair and unsustainable.”
Letter: Spend occupancy taxes on healing tourism’s impacts
“The tourism fund could be used to provide paying jobs for locals to be out in the parks and forests making sure visitors practice “leave no trace”; park only where they are supposed to; do trail work; and prevent mapless tourists from getting lost in the woods.”
Biz Briefs: Blue Ridge Pride debuts LGBTQ+ business alliance
Blue Ridge Pride, a nonprofit supporting the LGBTQ community in Western North Carolina, launched an online business directory for LGBTQ-owned and inclusive businesses called the Blue Ridge Pride Business Alliance on June 25. The directory, available at BlueRidgePride.org/Business, includes retail, food and drink, leisure and services and other categories. Businesses listed in the BRPBA directory […]
Letter: Support citizen safety efforts first
“Should not the county/city focus on supporting citizen safety efforts before looking at marketing programs targeted at tourism?”
Letter: Reroute half of occupancy taxes to infrastructure
“I think and truly believe it is a travesty that so much of the funds from the occupancy tax are rerouted to advertising for more tourism!”
Letter: Missing the old Asheville
“Downtown did need help, but it didn’t need to be turned into the tourist-oriented, overbuilt, overdeveloped mess that it has become.”
Man handlers
Letter: Stop with the insular local mentality
“I’m tired of people here complaining about growth. Frankly, this small-mindedness reminds me of people in Maine who want to keep out ‘outsiders from away.’”
Canton and Maggie Valley consider additional occupancy tax
House Bill 412 would enable the two Haywood County municipalities to levy a 2% occupancy tax on accommodations like hotels, motels and Airbnbs, which would then be managed by new town-specific tourism development authorities.
BCTDA approves $15.3 million for tourism marketing
Nearly all of the members of the public who commented on the issue expressed concern over the amount of money being spent to draw more tourists to the area and asked that the funds allocated for advertising instead be spent on city infrastructure, schools and reparations for Asheville’s Black residents.
Letter: Asheville needs a population cap
“Asheville’s not weird anymore, and I’m sad about that.”
Letter: Asheville, we need to invest in ourselves
“We need to invest in ourselves — pay living wages, build or convert affordable housing, expand public transportation, house the homeless, focus spending on the people who live here.”
Letter: Will marketing make us ‘Myrtle Beach of the Mountains’?
“Isn’t this like telling a family of eight living in a two-room house that you’re persuading a couple of baseball teams to move in with them?”
Letter: The TDA’s biggest-ever marketing spend
“Before we go hog wild on marketing Asheville to the world, can we pause (or at least more slowly ramp up) to consider what’s best for the city and its inhabitants?”
Letter: The occupancy tax and the soul of the city
“The secret was out long ago. So, just how many millions do we need to promote, to advertise this town?”
Buncombe commissioners must rein in the TDA
“Other cities have used their occupancy taxes to direct millions to infrastructure and social programs while still supporting vibrant tourism industries. Why can’t we?”
Letter: Au revoir, Charlotte Street
“The affordable housing problems of Asheville will not be solved by destroying our heritage.”