2023 Another Great Year | Blue Ridge, GA

Chamber Membership

We are ending the year with a record number of Chamber members - 991!

Total New Chamber Members - 173

As always, we are thankful for each of our members!

Visitor Center Statistics

We had excellent visitation to each of our three visitor centers. The meeting spaces in the downtown location as well as the main center are being utilized and have been a great benefit to the community. The downtown center has now been open a full year, and is doing well with visitation continuing to grow. Check out all our centers here. See stats below.

Total guests:

Downtown Blue Ridge – 10,000+
Main Center – 4,900+
McCaysville – 4,200+

We had visitors from all 50 states. The majority came from Georgia, followed by Florida, Alabama & Tennessee

We had guests from 25 different countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Columbia, El Salvadore, England, France, Germany, Guatemala, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland.

Social Media

Facebook followers:
@VisitBlueRidgeGA - 142,000 (increase of 15,000)
@FanninCountyChamberofCommerce – 8,400 (increase of 800)
@VisitCopperBasin – 4,100 (increase of 800)

Instagram followers:
@visitblueridgega -35,400 (increase of 2,600)
@fannincountychamber -1,783 (increase of 328)
@visitcopperbasin -2,117 (increase of 321)

Results from our 2023 Visitor Survey

To see results of our new 2023 Visitor Survey click here.

Website Statistics

We continue to see record website performance. Explore our website here.

Totals for 2023:

Website Sessions – 1.9 million+ compared to 1.5 million in 2022
Website Page Views – 3.78 million +
New Website Users –1.4 million compared to 1.1 million in 2022

Stewardship #Lovinglocal

We are committed to #lovinglocal and we continue to encourage our visitors to enjoy Blue Ridge and Fannin County safely and to help protect our beautiful natural resources.

Over the past couple of years, we have worked to educate the visitor, and we will continue doing so in 2024. One new initiative that we will continue and enhance is the Lights Off, Fireflies on campaign. Explore it here.

Additional efforts we will continue:

Distribution of 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.

Sharing educational videos on our website and social media. Watch these by clicking.

Pack It In & Pack It Out

Plan Ahead

Respect Mother Nature

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 3% increase from 2022 in hotel/motel tax. The Chamber’s portion of restricted funds year to date 2023 is $2.95 million and approximately $492,000 of that is restricted to Tourism Product Development. Fannin County Government also received over $2.95 million of unrestricted funds.

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 kick off on Tuesday, January 9th at Cohutta Country Store.

The Annual Banquet is scheduled for Saturday, March 9th.

The Clay Shoot will be on Friday, May 3rd.

The Golf tournament will be Tuesday, October 8th.

To get updates about Chamber events view our Chamber Events Calendar. Events are always in our weekly newsletter also. Have questions about these events? Email Shannon@blueridgemountains.com