Asheville can't turn its back on tourism. We need it to survive | OPINION

Jeff Greiner | GUEST COLUMNIST

Wow! This idea put out by Ami Worthen is absolutely shocking to me, and I confronted the TDA before confronting the TDA was cool. (Evidently, based on a few vocal people, some are acting like it’s cool now.)

Full disclosure, I own a locals and tourists-based business called Adventure Center of Asheville. My first visit to Asheville? I was a tourist on my honeymoon. What did we do on that visit over 30 years ago? We visited Biltmore Estate, walked downtown where we found little businesses open so we drove to Hickory to go shopping! We loved WNC though, so we always wanted to get back here to live. In 1996, that dream became reality and while my wife taught in the local schools, I reached out to the Asheville CVB (Now Explore Asheville and TDA) to help me promote my business and meet other businesses I could partner with.

That ultimately resulted in building the Adventure Center of Asheville. We are a proud member of the Asheville community, serve thousands of families, youth, and adult groups from Asheville and, yes, thousands of tourists.

Our business couldn’t survive and serve the local community without them. We employ dozens of seasonal employees which are often students coming home from college for the summer, but we also employ a half-dozen employees that are year-round managers making a good living and buying homes in Asheville.

Literally throwing away this tremendous opportunity would be a punch in the gut for our community. Asheville is a tourism-driven town. It’s a great place to visit, work, live and, heaven forbid, make a living! I am part of a family with three children, two son in laws, one grandchild, and many employees that depend upon tourism to live in Asheville.

Related: The Buncombe TDA spends millions on unsustainable tourism - and we can stop it | OPINION

My daughter (child of a tourism business owner) and son-in-law returned to Asheville to teach. My tourism company has donated over $200,000 cash directly into the community for local non-profit organizations plus immeasurable donations of services to schools, churches, and causes. My son, working on his Eagle Scout project building a shelter at a local autism camp, plays sports on T.C. Roberson teams. I spend almost all my income on taxes, payroll, local contractors, supplies from local stores, and professional business services here in Asheville.

Tourism doesn’t just impact tourist attractions and hotels. It supports our grocery stores, gas stations, doctors, realtors, car dealerships, pet groomers, favorite restaurants, lawyers, accountants, and almost any other business you can name. I’ve met many, many great visitors to Asheville that are regular, hard working adults and families that have saved all year just to be able to visit Asheville and share experiences and time with loved ones. Our tourists are not just “rich visitors” and Asheville’s popularity is partly because there are ample opportunities for any demographic to visit here.

Also, I am, “building with each other” to keep Asheville a great place to visit, live, raise a family, work and give back to my community. I don’t appreciate being thrown under the bus because we may need to tweak some things about how the region moves forward and saying it would be a “long and arduous process” may be true but implying we should just burn the book doesn’t make sense either. (FYI- they recently made changes in an attempt to improve the process).

Finally, millions of dollars have gone to benefit our general community like soccer fields, The Nature Center, the River Arts District, and the Civic Center to name a few. Why would we just throw away those future opportunities? Seems most people I see not liking the system mainly don’t like not having a way to gain access to that money for their own passion. Once they do there will be a whole new group of people that have their own better way to use it. And the beat goes on!

Jeff Greiner is the owner of The Adventure Center of Asheville. He lives in Asheville.