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Partner.VisitSmokies.org/visitor-economy

The visitor economy, seven counties deep

Visit North Carolina is the source for every figure on this page

VisitNC publishes county level visitor spending each year, prepared for it by Tourism Economics. Those published county rows are the only inputs used here. Visit Smokies does not collect, model, or adjust any of it.

What this page adds is regional focus. It pulls our seven counties out of a one hundred county statewide file, sums them into a regional picture, and sets them beside each other so a business in Hayesville or Robbinsville can see where its community sits. Read it as a shortcut to the finding, not as the source of it.

When a number goes into a grant application, a board packet, a council presentation, or a press release, cite Visit North Carolina and the official study name, and take the figure from the VisitNC dashboard or the published county file. Both are linked at the bottom of this page.

  • Published by VisitNC. Every county row on this page: spending by category, total spending, growth, jobs, labor income, taxes, and savings per resident.
  • Summed by Visit Smokies. Regional totals, which VisitNC does not publish as a single line. Each one is the arithmetic sum of the seven published county rows and nothing else.
  • Flagged for review. Two per-resident figures do not reconcile against county population. They are called out further down the page and should not be cited publicly until VisitNC confirms them.

Regional snapshot

Ten years of data

How the region got here

Visitor spending across the seven counties, 2016 through the most recent published year. The line below is the sum of the seven county figures VisitNC publishes each year.

County detail

County by county

Sort any column to compare. Dollar figures are in millions. Growth compares each county against the prior year, so a negative number means visitor spending came in below the year before.

Where the money goes

Spending mix by county

Every county in the region earns more from food and beverage than from any other category, which puts restaurants, breweries, and outfitter cafes at the center of the local visitor economy. Bars show each county's share by category, not dollar size.

Read the numbers carefully

What this data does and does not say

Before you cite a figure

  • Lodging includes second home spending. VisitNC's model folds second home activity into the lodging line, so lodging here runs higher than paid room revenue alone. It is not a substitute for occupancy tax collections.
  • Transportation covers ground and air. That category captures fuel, rentals, and air travel attributed to the county, which is part of why it ranks high in counties without an airport.
  • The Qualla Boundary is not a separate line. The model reports by county geography, so visitor activity on the Boundary sits inside the Swain and Jackson totals rather than standing on its own.
  • County data runs a year behind the state. VisitNC releases statewide figures each spring and county figures in late summer or early fall, so the newest statewide number will usually be one year ahead of what you see here.
  • Growth rates are not additive. Each county's percent change is measured against its own prior year, so the seven rates cannot be added or averaged into a regional number. The regional change comes from summing the dollars, not the rates. A county can post the fastest percentage in the region and still add the fewest dollars to it, so read the percentage and the dollar total side by side.

Three things to watch in the historical series

  • The 2020 and 2021 years do not behave like the rest of the series. Regional spending fell only 2.0% in 2020, then rose 45.3% in 2021. Both figures sit well outside the 4% to 6% range the region posted in the years before. VisitNC notes that Tourism Economics calibrated the historical model to align with the statewide Tourism Satellite Account, so before publishing any comparison that crosses 2020 or 2021, read the methodology documentation or check with VisitNC.
  • Swain County's 2021 population is listed as 71,401 in the downloadable file, against roughly 14,000 in every other year of the series. That single value inflates the 2021 regional population to 262,122 and pulls the published 2021 regional tax savings per resident down to $473.35. Corrected to a population near its neighboring years, that figure would land closer to $605. Treat the 2021 per-resident number as unreliable, and confirm it with VisitNC before using it anywhere public.
  • Macon County's 2025 tax savings per resident is listed as $1,520.51, roughly double its 2024 figure of $759.55. Working backward from the published state and local tax lines, that figure implies a Macon population near 22,000, against roughly 37,000 in the years around it. Macon's spending growth of 11.1% reconciles cleanly against its 2024 total, so the spending, jobs, and tax lines look sound. It is the per-resident calculation that does not. Leave Macon out of any per-resident ranking you publish until VisitNC confirms the population input.

Go to the source

Pull your own county numbers

Everything on this page comes from Visit North Carolina, and the links below are where the figures actually live. Go to them before you publish. Pulling the number from the dashboard or the county file means your citation points at the source rather than at a summary of it, and it lets you confirm the figure has not been revised since this page was last updated.

Related in the Partner Hub

The NC State studies report economic output, which counts direct spending plus the supplier and wage activity it sets off. Visit North Carolina reports visitor spending only. The two are not interchangeable and should never be added together or compared side by side.

Visitor ResearchIndependent NC State studies on who visits and where they travel from. Marketing PerformanceHow regional visibility performed across the 2026 reporting year. Motorcoach InitiativeThe group travel plan, the add-on pilot, and the attraction readiness form. Brand KitLogos, colors, typography, and brand phrases for co-branded work. MembershipHow partnership works, what it includes, and how to enroll your business.