2022 Another Great Year
We had another record-breaking year and we want to share the good news with you!
Chamber Membership
We are ending the year with a record number of Chamber members - 925!
Total New Chamber Members - 174
As always, we are thankful for each of our members!
Visitor Center Statistics
We had excellent visitation to each of our three visitor centers. See the statistics below. Have you visited our new downtown location that opened in May? Don't forget there is space to pop in and work or to hold a meeting in the conference room. Check out all our centers here.
Total guests:
Downtown Blue Ridge – 7,900+
Main Center – 7,500+
McCaysville – 3,000+
We had visitors from 49 states (no Montana)!! The majority came from Georgia, followed by Florida.
We had guests from 18 different countries: Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, London, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan
Social Media
Facebook followers:
@VisitBlueRidgeGA - 127,299
@FanninCountyChamberofCommerce - 7,600
@VisitCopperBasin - 3,300
Instagram followers:
@visitblueridgega -32,800
@fannincountychamber -1,455
@visitcopperbasin -1,796
Results from our 2022 Visitor Survey
To see results of our new 2022 Visitor Survey click here.
Website Statistics
We launched a website refresh in the 4th quarter of 2022. Check it out here.
Totals for 2022:
Website Sessions – 1.5 million+
Website Pageviews – 3.7 million +
New Website Users –1.1 million +
Recreate Responsibly
We’re asking locals and visitors to enjoy Blue Ridge and Fannin County safely and to help protect our beautiful natural resources. Look at our new videos by clicking each below.
We have implemented many new efforts over the year that focuses on sustainability. We have distributed over 16,000 backpacks encouraging families to pack it in and pack it out. We have print ads in various local publications encouraging visitors to recreate responsibly. These are just a couple of examples. We will continue to be dedicated to this effort in 2023!
Read more on the Leave No Trace page on our website.
Fannin County Hotel/Motel Excise Tax
We continue to see increases in hotel/motel tax. This is great for our community because visitors pay the excise tax (not locals). Year to date January – November, we have seen a 15% increase from 2021 in hotel/motel tax. The Chamber’s portion year to date 2022 is $2.8 million and approximately $478,000 of that is Tourism Product Development.
Fannin County also received over $2.8 million of unrestricted funds.
All of the Chamber’s funding is restricted to either marketing or product development, and we have used our max % allowed by the law for product development based on the County's current 6% lodging tax. We were also able to award over $150,000 in funding to non-profit and government entities for cooperative marketing.
The huge accomplishment this year is all the amazing projects that were funded through Tourism Product Development. These projects benefit locals, visitors, and children of all ages!
Click here for the full list of projects!
Explaining the restrictions and percentage breakdowns can get very complicated. If anyone has questions about hotel/motel tax, please reach out to president@blueridgemountains.com or call 706-632-5680 and ask for Christie Gribble.
Upcoming in 2023
Business After Hours will occur on the first Tuesday of the month starting February 2023. April Business After Hours will be on the 11th due to our local Spring Break. No Business After Hours in July. We are excited to see you at these casual networking events!
The Clay Shoot will be Tuesday, May 9th.
The Golf tournament will be Tuesday, October 10th.
We have some educational classes planned for 2023 - stay tuned!
To get updates about Chamber events view our Chamber Events Calendar. Events are always in our weekly newsletter also.