ASHEVILLE – Walk around downtown Asheville these days and it’s not unusual to hear tourists chatting with one another in German or French, or maybe even Japanese or Hindi.
A well-known travel destination domestically for more than a century, Asheville and environs have landed squarely on the international tourism map in recent years. If you ask a downtown merchant where their international shoppers are coming from, you’ll likely get a long list of countries.
“The other day we had someone in from New Zealand, and we see people from Europe, from Pakistan, from India, of course, with Chai Pani just down the street,” said Susan Turner, owner of the Street Fair shop in downtown Asheville, referring to the popular Indian street food restaurant. “Switzerland, Italy.”
She could go on, and she would be right — international visitation to Asheville, population about 88,000 — appears to be on the rise, mirroring a statewide trend. Some 1.2 million international travelers came to North Carolina in 2013, a 1.5 percent decline from the previous year, but travel officials expect 2014 and 2015 numbers to show a sizable increase.
“We haven’t finished the 2014 numbers yet, but I definitely think they’re up and above the domestic (travel) numbers, which were up about 5 percent,” said Wit Tuttell, executive director of Visit North Carolina, a nonprofit that works with the state to promote Tar Heel tourism. “So I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw about a 7 percent increase for 2014.”
Canada led the charge to North Carolina in 2013, with more than 500,000 visitors, followed by the United Kingdom, China, Germany and Japan. The Tar Heel state saw sizable increases from some countries, including a 7.4 percent jump in Chinese tourists and 4.2 percent from Germany.
Mountain boutiques, galleries and restaurants are a draw, as well as the majestic views, waterfalls, parks and attractions such as the Biltmore Estate, said Marla Tambellini, vice president of marketing at the Asheville Convention Visitors Bureau.
The bureau has no specific numbers for international visitation to Asheville, but Tambellini said it likely follows statewide trends.
“Currently, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada are our largest markets,” Tambellini said. “While we do have partners who are dedicating product for international tour operators, we are also getting anecdotal reports of more individual travelers who are booking directly via the Internet.”
Asheville and mountain towns are not a primary destination, Tambellini said. But especially with Europeans, they pencil in Asheville or other Southern cities on a repeat trip, after they’ve done the “gateway” cities such as Chicago, New York, Orlando or Washington, D.C.
“They’re looking for an authentic American experience, the smaller towns,” she said. “I think we appeal to people looking for a Southern city, a taste of Appalachia, and the Cherokee culture resonated well with international travelers, especially with Germans.”
Major boost to economy
The Westenhoff family from Hamburg, Germany, got what they thought was a taste of Appalachian culture on a recent trip to Asheville. Staying at the Red Roof Inn in Candler, they dined at a place one of them described as “part restaurant, part like a museum” — a Cracker Barrel restaurant.
They booked their trip through a guide, but they still got steered to Asheville. They did plan on spending a day in Cherokee and the Great Smoky Mountains, though.
On a recent afternoon, the family — mom Christine Westenhoff, her boyfriend, Dirk Boettcher, and daughters Magdalena, 21, and Claudia, 17, strolled through downtown on a shopping excursion, window shopping at the Grove Arcade. In the United States on a 14-day trip, they had already done the bigger cities, including Charlotte, and their tour company set them up with a three-day stay in Asheville.
“We have been reading about the Smoky Mountains, and we wanted to discover that,” Christine Westenhoff said. “And we live in a big city, so I think we appreciate seeing the smaller cities.”
“And the natural beauty,” Magdalena chipped in. “We discovered before a lot of smaller cities in Canada, and we liked that.”
Claudia said so far they really liked “the people and the flair” of Asheville, known for its art galleries, restaurants and street performers. But Boettcher offered a different summation of their visit.
“Shopping with three girls,” he said with a laugh.
In a nutshell, that’s the point of all this tourism — stimulating the economy.
“Just about across the board, international travelers stay twice as long and spend twice as much as our domestic visitors,” Tuttell said. “So we love growing that market, because we only have to grow it half as much to get as much business.”
The mother lode of travelers to North Carolina is still domestic tourists, which total about 50 million a year, compared to 1.3 million from overseas. But the economic contribution from those overseas is nothing to sneeze at — about $450 million in annual spending.
Domestic travelers spend a little over $21 billion in North Carolina annually.
Carole Miller, owner of True Confections bakery and coffee shop in the Grove Arcade, said foreign travelers aren’t the heart of her business, but they do provide a nice boost.
“I’ve seen many, many more lately,” Miller said. “Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, Germany. Some of them I see are doing the whole South on their trips, or the whole Southeast, because they didn’t want to do the whole New York-Los Angeles thing.”
Targeting the international traveler
For the most part, they are not coming here by accident.
“We’ve spent a lot of money trying to bring over editorial writers and travel writers (from Europe) to get coverage of the state,” Tuttell said.
He related a story from a few years ago about taking a group of German travel writers to Mount Mitchell and encountering a guide who was somewhat skeptical that German travelers would actually make the trip.
“We get up to the top, and the first four people we met were from Germany,” Tuttell said with a laugh.
His organization spends about $600,000 annually on international marketing, and that includes funds to run offices in Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. They also spend about $50,000 annually with Brand USA, a national public-private partnership that promotes international travel to America.
Tambellini said an Asheville Convention Visitors Bureau employee attends two shows a year with a focus on international travel, the International POW WOW and TravelSouth USA International Showcase. International travel operators attend, and Asheville pitches itself as a possible destination, along with other Southern cities.
“At each event we meet with more than 40 international buyers to sell them, including an overnight stay in Asheville on the itineraries they are developing,” Tambellini said.
At the TravelSouth event, staff will share a booth with representatives from the Biltmore Estate and Asheville Outlets. Also, A Brand USA tour will visit Asheville in early December.
Bill Foley, co-owner of the Chocolate Fetish on Haywood Street, said he’s noticed a small uptick in international visitors, and he always makes a point to ask where customers are from. He and his wife lived in Europe, and they’ve traveled extensively in South America, so they’re pretty good at picking out accents.
His favorite encounter involved a tourist from Seoul, Korea, who stopped in his shop. Official marketing had little to do with him finding Foley’s shop.
“I said, ‘How did you hear about us?’” Foley recalled. “And he said, ‘My neighbors told me — if you go to Asheville, North Carolina, you go to the Chocolate Fetish.’”
He also sees tourists who are business men or women who have come to the BMW auto plant, the Michelin tire operation or other international industrial locales in the Upstate of South Carolina and who take a side trip to Asheville.
“And I’ve noticed more people from China,” Foley said. “I think it’s been noticeable.”
To him, the allure of Asheville is obvious.
“We lived in Europe, and sometimes when I walk out on the street here, I feel like I’m back in Brussels or Paris, on a tiny scale, of course,” Foley said.
North Carolina’s top International Markets by market share, 2013
Country, number of visitors, total spent, average spending per visitor
1. Canada, 516,073, $127M, $246
2. United Kingdom, 88,662, $32.6M, $376
3. China/Hong Kong, 38,014, $28.2M, $742
4. Germany, 80,261, $25.3M, $315
5. Japan, 28,150, $14.9M, $528
6. Mexico, 34,132, $13.2M, $387
7. India, 32,941, $12.8M, $388
8. Brazil, 24,262, $10.7M, $440
9. France, 26,350, $9.5M, $362
10. Italy, 14,196, $6.4M, $447
11. Ireland, 11,699, $4.8M, $412
12. Switzerland, 8,145, $4.7M, $579
13. South Korea, 9,562, $4.4M, $460
14. Australia, 10,172, $4.2M, $417
15. Sweden, 9,870, $3.8M, $383
Total, 1.2M visitors, $437.3M, $361
Source: Visit NC, a unit of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, developed in conjunction with Visa, VisaVue Travel
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