Inside NC’s tourism push: Tracking Helene’s impact, ‘playing heartstrings’ & wrangling social media ...Middle East

The Biltmore Estate experienced flooding and damage to the grounds and some buildings — but not the house — during Hurricane Helene, but was welcoming tourists back by November, ahead of its Christmas season. (Photo by Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)

Earlier this year, Wit Tuttell and his colleagues at North Carolina’s Visit NC tourism office were carefully watching a key metric in their monthly surveys: how many tourists weren’t coming to the mountains because they thought they weren’t accessible.

North Carolina had for months been blasting out marketing under a campaign designed to bring business back to the area after Hurricane Helene. “The best way for us to get back is for you to come back,” ads pleaded to potential visitors.

Finally, a survey showed less than 10% of people sharing that sentiment — a key watermark. Visit NC pivoted and launched a new campaign: “Rediscover the Unforgettable.”

“We want people to remember what a great experience going to the North Carolina mountains was,” Tuttell told NC Newsline in an interview. “We want them to feel like they can rediscover that. Now is the time they can go back out there.”

In the first full year since the deadliest storm in North Carolina history, tourism has been overall “sluggish,” Tuttell said. He estimated that to date, 2025 spending was “about on par” or “down anywhere 1-3%” from 2024.

That’s not solely because of the Helene recovery or a slowdown in visitors to the mountains. But those concerns have added yet another layer to a complex tourism landscape, increasingly driven by social media chatter and an uncertain economic future.

North Carolina’s tourism office has responded with almost $14 million in custom advertising campaigns over the past year. They’ve relied on data to adjust “delicate” messaging, luring visitors back while tapping a network of influencers to boost the region across social channels.

Now, even in a “softening” market for leisure travel, Tuttell said, North Carolina as a whole is “faring better than other destinations.”

How VisitNC has pitched the mountains in the year since Helene

Just weeks after Helene flooded western North Carolina, some storefronts and communities — if they were able — opened back up for business. It wasn’t a choice so much as a necessity, in a region so heavily driven by tourism.

Visit NC’s first post-Helene tourism campaign was a cautious one, urging visitors to return and spend money in communities that needed it. But they were careful “not to overpromise.”

“It wasn’t going to be the typical mountain vacation,” Tuttell said. “People felt that they wanted to help, but they didn’t want to interfere. So we had to get the message across that going there wasn’t going to interfere.”

Those early months of advertising were targeted as much at in-state residents as visitors from across the country. That was by design: The state wanted to remind North Carolinians of their fondness for the region — and that their neighbors needed their help.

“We sort of played on their heartstrings with the first few messages,” Tuttell said. “Knowing that people love this area, and have an affinity toward it.”

After about six months, they pivoted to “Rediscover the Unforgettable” and blasted out images of Asheville’s breweries and restaurants, cycling and rafting in the Smokies and wineries in the High Country. The idea, Tuttell said, was to shift away from a recovery-focused message to a more inspirational one.

When all is said and done, the state is hoping to be able to use their current campaign for the Piedmont and the coast: “For Real, Visit North Carolina.”

“Elsewhere, kids are watching reels on a phone,” a narrator says in one ad for the campaign, as a young girl casts a line into the water at the Outer Banks.

Visit NC’s western marketing has been paid for almost entirely through money allocated by the legislature across multiple hurricane relief packages. That allowed the agency to shift money for their “inspirational campaign” to the Piedmont and the coast.

In 2024, 71 counties saw increased visitor spending from the year before, the Department of Commerce announced Wednesday. Among the counties that saw the biggest boosts: those neighboring Helene-impacted counties, where hundreds of workers and volunteers aiding in disaster relief stayed for weeks to months.

Social media tourism — and its pitfalls for western NC

Earlier this summer, tourism officials met with a group of influencers and social media personalities in Asheville.

Ahead of “leaf season,” they’re hoping a steady clip of posts on Instagram, TikTok and other platforms will help spur more trips, from both returning and new visitors. Visit NC has formally contracted with a few creators through its advertising agency, while others are considered more informal partners.

But they’ll all be competing with a deluge of other posts and chatter, that Tuttell says have made selling a dominant tourism-focused message harder than ever.

“In the past, what we worried about was the Weather Channel sending a team out and Jim Cantore scaring people away on your TV screens,” said Tuttell, referencing the now-retired meteorologist who reported from the field during various hurricanes and disasters. “What we really saw with this storm is that there were 1,000 different people on their phones, posting videos to social networks, that had the most influence on people and visitation.”

The state saw a dip in sentiment about visiting the mountains around the six-month anniversary of Helene. Tuttell believes that was fueled in part by old videos of flooding and destruction that resurfaced online. And he’s expecting a similar dip next month, around the one-year anniversary.

Tourism officials have, however, been able to count on one prominent person to continue boosting the region: Gov. Josh Stein.

Stein has made the recovery and revitalization of the mountains a centerpiece of his first months in office. He’s made frequent visits out to impacted communities, shaking hands with local officials and business owners. And he made an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in June.

“The governor and the First Lady have been the biggest cheerleaders we’ve had for western North Carolina,” Tuttell said. “And boy has it been beneficial.”

Stein’s office has also leaned into more casual, social media-focused promotions.

One post featured a staffer handing him a disposable camera, before clicking through the images he took while on vacation in western North Carolina. And when Donna Kelce — mother of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Travis Kelce and soon to be mother-in-law to Taylor Swift — posted that she had visited Biltmore Estate in Asheville, Stein chimed in.

“Western NC is open for business (and a wonderful place for a wedding)!” Stein wrote.

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