The Future

Tourism

North Carolina competes with many other states for the tourism dollar. The main reason that we are the eighth most-visited state in the country revolves around our natural landscapes and their variety, our history and heritage, and our popular recreational destinations, from Biltmore and the Blue Ridge Parkway to our Piedmont golf courses, the N.C. Zoo and museums, and fine sandy beaches.

The future of our tourism industry depends entirely on our being able to reach the environmental protection and management goals outlined in the other sections. If we are able to manage our development, proactively support a sustainable future for our farms and forests, protect our water and air quality, and manage our biodiversity, more and more people will see North Carolina, as a great place to live, to start a business, and to visit.

Compromise in any of these areas will ultimately impact the tourism industry and its ability to currently support over 180,000 sustainable, non-migratory jobs. If this happens over the next 20 to 30 years, we will then see North Carolina’s tourism industry double its economic impact, to include probably another 50,000 jobs. That in turn will encourage environmental care, both in the natural and manmade landscapes to the benefit of all North Carolina’s residents. What we will probably see in the next 20 years is a continuation of the tourism trends today, where people want good value for money, “one-stop” travel arrangements and services, ease of access to sites of interest, and more access to the open countryside. They will focus on the short break, typically 3 to 8 days. The mountains and the coast will have gone through a period of self-searching in respect to maintaining their tourism strength, particularly in balancing the needs of visitors with sensitively-designed and placed development. The heartland, largely underused currently as a tourist resource, will, with its considerable history and heritage, see a strong increase in visitation, providing it coordinates its efforts to encourage that across county boundaries, on a regional basis.