Bryson City is ready to welcome visitors back after Helene, but tourists are still canceling

As much of western North Carolina works to recover from Helene, some business owners say they’re worried about what they’re calling a “second disaster”: the loss of tourism during peak season.

Though many cities have asked visitors to stay away during the recovery process, Bryson City officials say they're ready to welcome tourists again. The town was not immune to the storm's impacts — flooding damaged 10 businesses on its main street and two museums. Residents also lost power and cell service for days. But Erin Smith, who owns Humanité Boutique, says they’ve largely bounced back. 

“I was able to open my store seven to eight days later after we cleaned up," she says. "All of the downtown stores that were affected are open. All the restaurants are open and everything is running normally — we're pretty much back to normal.”

But tourism hasn’t rebounded. Smith, who is also an Airbnb owner, says she started getting cancellations left and right, all the way through December.

“When it's yourself, you figure it out. 'I can do it this way. I can go to plan XYZ,'" she says. But when you hear every Airbnb owner that you know and every hotel owner and every resort owner say, I have lost 50 to 90% of my reservations. I don't know how I'm going to survive this, that's when we all kick into gear and say, 'Okay, what can we do?'”

She contacted the North Carolina Department of Transportation and other government agencies to try to get them to publicly clarify that Bryson City’s roadways were open. 

Smith says business owners are meeting now to discuss other ways to get visitors back in the area ahead of the holiday season — typically the area’s busiest time for tourism.