Extension Helps Sustain Tourism Across North Carolina

Ann Savage often receives quizzical looks and questions when she tells people what she does for a living.

“You work for NC State Extension, and you help with tourism?”

“People are generally curious about what that means,” Savage said with a chuckle. “And they also say, ‘Oh, that sounds like a fun job.’”

Extension is a recognized and respected authority throughout North Carolina. In 101 local centers across the state, experts and specialists offer practical solutions to issues in areas including agriculture and food, health and nutrition, and youth development through 4-H.

And yes, Extension also supports tourism, in keeping with its mission to create prosperity for all North Carolinians.

Savage is an associate with Tourism Extension, which provides programs, resources and assistance to Extension experts and communities in North Carolina.

“In North Carolina we have such a robust Extension service and we have such an important tourism industry,” she said. “I like to brag on NC State because they recognize the value of having this position.”

Benefits for Visitors and Locals

Tourism is an important industry to the state. According to the North Carolina Department of Commerce, travelers spent a record $36.7 billion on trips to and within the state in 2024. The industry supports more than 230,000 jobs.

A grain-to-grass distillery in Johnston County offers tastings and sales to tourists and local.

North Carolina has an abundance of attractions to tempt travelers. Outdoor lovers can enjoy our mountains, lakes and rivers, many of them in state parks. Our beaches offer the chance for relaxation in the sun. There are world-class restaurants and, some would say, the best barbecue in the world. Families can find fun activities in just about every county, from you-pick farms to interactive museums. 

Savage, who graduated from NC State’s College of Natural Resources in 2018 with a master of science in parks, recreation and tourism management, supports programs aimed at providing sustainable tourism opportunities. She works with groups such as Visit NC, North Carolina State Parks, North Carolina Sea Grant and the North Carolina Oyster Trail to promote tourism in communities across the state.

“I try to put people together where it makes sense,” she said. “Marketing is obviously a huge thing, so it’s thinking about what message you’re sending out there.”

Efforts to grow tourism bring advantages to communities beyond the economic impact. The things that attract visitors also benefit locals.

“When we think about destinations or what tourism is to a community, a lot of it is improving the quality of life, like building and maintaining trails, or putting on events,” Savage said. “It is about how you can bring people together in meaningful ways.”

Related: Agritourism in North Carolina

North Carolina’s most visited destinations — cities like Asheville and the beach counties — have robust marketing and promotion efforts to entice travelers. Extension usually works with smaller towns, helping create programs and strategies that combine tourism with community development and inspire local entrepreneurship.

“When it comes to rural destinations, we encourage them to think about what makes their communities special. What do the people in the community find special there?” Savage said.

Flower arranging is one of the hands-on experiences available through People-First Tourism.

Thinking about finding and promoting the people and places that are unique to a town or a county led to the creation of People-First Tourism, a microenterprise project born out of sustainable tourism research led by NC State. It connects curious travelers with local people for hands-on, interactive experiences.

Helping After Helene

As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene approaches, much of Savage’s work currently revolves around North Carolina’s western counties.

“Helene had significant impacts, particularly for small businesses,” she said. “I’m developing a guide for destination leaders, working with partners around the country who have dealt with similar flood or wind events. We’re trying to better prepare our destinations for what seems like more of these weather events that are going to be happening.”

Helene hit western North Carolina on Sept. 27, 2024, causing widespread damage and devastation. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Extension experts addressed emergency needs. They staffed relief supply centers for humans and livestock and provided resources to help salvage crops and businesses. 

Tourism Extension also played an important role in helping at-risk people and businesses. 

Autumn is an important season for tourism in the mountain counties. Visitors flock to the region for fall foliage, for festivals, for apples sold at roadside stands. Later in the season, choose-and-cut Christmas tree farms do big business.

Many tourists travel to western North Carolina to see fall foliage.

After Helene, Savage connected with Extension agents and local tourism development authorities (TDAs) to gauge the extent of the damage. She worked with partners to help get the word out that, although the mountains sustained significant damage, many parts of the state were still open.

“Visit NC was doing a lot of work to try to help clear up any misperceptions,” she said. “Some tourists thought that the whole state had some sort of impact. They didn’t understand the geography of where those impacts were. We were trying to help places that didn’t have as much damage, to make sure that folks knew that they were open and also to help people know when, for the most part, it was safe to travel to that region.”

She also worked to procure resources for tourism-dependent areas impacted by the storm.

“Initially it was talking to a lot of the destination leaders, the TDA folks and others, to see what sort of questions they were getting, to see what resources we could find for them,” she said. “A lot of them had to do with small businesses and what they needed. We were hearing a lot about the things that are probably similar to farmers. ‘We took out Covid loans. We can’t afford to take out FEMA loans as well.’ Those were a lot of the questions I got at first. We needed grants for those businesses. We couldn’t tell them to sign up for loans.”

Solutions included a donor-supported fund in Haywood County that offered grant money to businesses, and finding resources such as the North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association, which had funds for hospitality workers affected by the disaster.

“A lot of people were out of work in the tourism industry,” Savage said. “I was sending resources to the Extension agents. There were funds from different entities. We included those on our web page in a section about the Helene response.”

Future-Proofing Tourism 

As fall approaches, she is monitoring lingering effects from Helene, working with Extension experts to determine if storm damage will continue to impact tourism.

Fraser firs at Panoramic View Christmas Tree Farm in Watauga County. Choose-and-cut farms are one of the top tourist attractions in western North Carolina.

“Apples and Christmas trees were two that were really affected, and we’ll still see some damage to those crops in the future,” she said. “People love to travel to farms out in western North Carolina. That’s one of the things that makes it such a special place. We have a Christmas tree specialist in the College of Natural Resources Extension group and they’ve been talking about what we could see with crops that could affect those opportunities.”

Savage is also helping future-proof the tourism industry by applying lessons learned from Helene. That includes putting together a guide that Extension agents and destination specialists across the state can use in the aftermath of a disaster.

“We want to have a plan in place so if a disaster strikes, you’ve already got some ideas of what needs to happen. The goal is for them to think about how they can be more resilient as a tourism destination in the future.”

The guide will be based in part on research done in the hurricane-prone eastern part of North Carolina, where lessons have been learned by virtue of experience. Savage began learning about the impacts of disasters on tourism shortly after joining Extension in August 2020.

Ann Savage, who graduated from NC State’s College of Natural Resources in 2018 with a master of science in parks, recreation and tourism management, helps grow tourism in North Carolina as an Extension associate.

“I was on a project with some Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management faculty in Ocracoke and Hatteras,” she said. “We were trying to understand how tourism businesses made decisions after Hurricane Dorian (in 2019) and then with the compounding crisis of Covid, how they were deciding when to open, how to open, if they should take loans. Some of that research is being leveraged in this guide that we’re putting together. It’s helping us think about how to support those businesses as a tourism leader when disasters come.”

History dictates that disasters will come, in unexpected ways and in unexpected places — such as hurricanes in the mountains.

“People just had no expectation that something to that scale could happen,” Savage said. “Very few owners of businesses or tourism folks had a sense that this was something that was possible.” 

When disaster strikes, Extension will be there with expert, research-based guidance to help communities recover — including in tourism.