Great Smoky Mountains National Park If outdoor adventure is what you are after, then you are in the right place! Nearby our secluded cabin rentals, you’ll find access to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
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Stay in a luxury cabin rental in the Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge area, and you’ll find attractions such as: When you are planning your next vacation, why compromise on what you all want to do? Our cabins in the Smoky Mountains offer easy access to all these things and more! Still, others want to have a ball, getting in plenty of exciting entertainment and fine dining to break up the monotony. Other people want to have fun adventures exploring the outdoors in a way that they can’t during the workweek. It will likely exceed $16 million this year.Some people define a vacation as a chance to get away from the city, to relax with a stunning view in total privacy. Through the end of October, this year’s figure is at $13.7 million. Similarly, the county’s lodging tax revenue from overnight rentals outside city limits has more than doubled since 2016 when it brought in $6.5 million. By the end of the year, the county expects 2021 to end at 67% occupancy. The number dipped to 48% in 2016 and remained relatively low in 2017. The number includes low tourism months like January and February (mid-20%) as well as heavy seasons like July and October (up to 75%). Average occupancy rates for overnight rentals, not hotels, inside the county (not including Pigeon Forge, Sevierville and Gatlinburg) for the entire year averaged a tick over 50% in 2015. Total gross receipt revenues (in millions)įor wider Sevier County, the story is much the same. The numbers have boomed in the last 12 months. But the pandemic also brought a wave of families to the fresh air of the mountains. The number of visitors slowed down in the first part of 2020. Both have rebounded and are at record highs after dipping in the wake of the fire, a turnaround that exceeded all expectations of leaders. Those visitors and the money they spend - largely funneled through the Gatlinburg/Sevier County tourism apparatus - is what funds the community.įor Gatlinburg, that looks like the gross receipt revenue tax, paid by local businesses, and the lodging revenue tax, paid by visitors. For millions within driving distance, that meant the Smokies. While the pandemic kept tourists away from traditional big-city attractions like museums and theaters, heading to the outdoors was a healthier options. The park is on pace to top 13 million this year. The Smokies, home of the most visited national park in the country, had 12.5 million visitors in 2019 and over 12 million in 2020 even with a condensed calendar due to COVID-19 closures.
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So much of the boom has been driven, as it always is, by visitors to the national park. You see it in new hotels and always crowded attractions like Anakeesta and the Gatlinburg SkyBridge.Īnd you see it in places like the new Mountain Brook Apartments in the Baskins Creek area, which were built atop a pile of torched ruins on the southern edge of town. It’s evident in the crowded strip in downtown Gatlinburg where it’s faster to walk than get get stuck in a traffic jam trying to find parking.
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Literally from the ashes, Sevier County and Gatlinburg have experienced a rebirth. I think we’ve moved on, but we still remember.”įrom that hurt and the public grieving, however, sprung an economic boom as impressive as the region has ever seen. “You regret that it happened, and you regret that lives were lost, and you pray for those families, but it’s something that will always be with everyone involved. “It may make you not think of them as often, but the fact that we lost 14 lives, the fact that so many people lost so much is always there and always will be. Well, it doesn’t,” Waters told Knox News from his Sevierville office last month. The Chimney Tops 2 fire had started high in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and crept its way out before exploding into the unsuspecting town of Gatlinburg five days later, killing 14 people and damaging over 2,800 structures.