View From Afar S1, E5: IPW 2025 | Vic Isley, President and CEO of Explore Asheville

I’m Billie Cohen, Afar’s editorial director, and welcome to View From Afar, a podcast that spotlights the people and ideas shaping the future of travel. And in this special series, I’m coming to you live from the floor of IPW, the annual travel conference organized by the U.S. Travel Association to share the best of America with the rest of the world.

This year, the conference is held in Chicago. And it’s an interesting year to be talking about the United States: In March 2025, data from the World Travel & Tourism Council showed that international visits to the U.S. had decreased, resulting in an estimated $12 billion loss in tourism revenue. At the same time, the country is gearing up for America’s 250th anniversary—and the energy is palpable. So at IPW, my colleague Michelle Baran and I sat down with travel industry CEOs to bring you the biggest conference news and insights and to share what’s on the horizon for America’s 250th birthday.

You’ll hear each of those conversations over the following week.

In this episode, I’m chatting with Vic Isley, president and CEO of Explore Asheville.

When Vic came on board with Explore Asheville in October 2020, it was a homecoming of sorts. A self-described “Carolina girl,” Vic grew up on a tobacco farm in rural North Carolina and started her career at the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau. After that, she traveled farther afield. She joined Destination DC right after 9/11, worked as the CEO of what is now called Destinations International, and then spent several years with the Bermuda Tourism Authority. But in the midst of the pandemic, she decided to return to Asheville. She wanted to help the city recover and tout Asheville’s unique blend of culture, community, cuisine, and natural beauty, all in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

But Mother Nature had another plan: Hurricane Helene. In this interview, we’ll talk to Vic about the challenges and the wins that she’s seen throughout Asheville’s continuing rebound, and why now is a great time for travelers to experience the city.

Welcome, Vic!

Transcript

Billie: Welcome, Vic! Thank you so much for coming. Huge fans of Asheville. We’re excited to talk about what you’ve got going on and what’s coming in the future.

So you have been with Asheville for about five years now. So I wanted to start by asking you, what are your top three reasons that people should come to Asheville now?

Vic: Oh gosh. Well, thanks for having us, and thank you for thinking of Asheville, North Carolina.

Top three things.

Billie: It’s hard to narrow it down, right?

Vic: Oh gosh. Fresh air, amazing food, and live music.

Billie: Ah, that’s great. Do you have a favorite of those three personally?

Vic: They’re all favorites. It’s a lovely place to live. It’s easy living in Asheville. We’re surrounded by two of the most visited National Park service units in the country: the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. And the Blue Ridge Mountains are some of the oldest mountains in the world, and we have one of the oldest rivers flowing through our city as well, the French Broad River.

Billie: Oh, cool. That sounds beautiful. And it is beautiful. So there’s a lot going on in the U.S. over the next couple of years. So I’m curious what you’re most excited about that’s coming up in ’25, ’26, experiences, new openings, or opportunities for visitors to experience in Asheville in the future.

Vic: There’s so much happening in Asheville. We’re, you know, about nine months following Helene and we’ve been making great progress in the mountains of western North Carolina.

There’s lots of parks. The National Arboretum has all of their trails open. It’s Spring into the Arb, so it is a great time to be at the Arboretum. We’ve got some news we can’t quite break yet, but we’re going to be really close, so we look forward to sharing that with you soon.

Billie: What if I ask really nicely?

Vic: [Laughs] Unfortunately, no; it’ll just be another reason to get back in touch with us in Asheville.

Billie: It’s true. Everyone, stay tuned for news. So, I’m glad you brought up Hurricane Helene. We’ve written a lot about it, how it affected Asheville’s economy and tourism specifically. Nine months into the recovery, can you talk about how Helene has transformed Asheville for better and for worse, and where things stand, and where you go from here?

Vic: Well, the grit and gumption and determination of the Appalachian people has been on full display since day one, and it remains today. There’s been tremendous progress made in many areas. [In] the River Arts District, which took on a lot of water from that French Broad River, businesses have reopened.

There are hundreds of artists that are in galleries in what we call the Upper Rad or River Arts District now. [In] the Wedge Building that took water through the first floor, Wedge Brewing has reopened. The Bull and Beggar restaurant has reopened and is actually expanding their kitchen and opening an oyster bar, which I am super excited about.

And there’s lots of progress. The Grand Bohemian Lodge has reopened in the Biltmore Village, which is just outside of the gates of Biltmore Estate. And the estate is doing very well. The greening of our area with rhododendrons blooming and trees greening. It’s just a beautiful place to be.

There are a few spaces that are going to take more time to heal, but much of Buncombe County and western North Carolina are open and ready to welcome visitors. You know, travel and hospitality has really been part of the area for decades, and so it’s really important for our own state residents to come visit and for people all over the world to come and make sure that that part of the country stays healthy and thriving.

Billie: It seemed like from the outside there was so much collaboration and community that emerged, especially among tourism and arts organizations and creative communities. Was that something that you had to foster as part of Explore Asheville, or did that just happen naturally?

Vic: You know, Appalachian people are hearty people and they really care about their neighbors, so neighbors helping neighbors has always been something that’s taken root in Appalachia and it just became even stronger following the storm. And it still is happening on the ground today. That kind of collaboration, in terms of restaurant owners and chefs and farms, with our distillers and with our breweries, it really is a collaborative community, and music has really been a big part of that.

Billie: Wow. Can you talk more about the music? Is there a lot of live performances? Are there festivals?

Vic: Asheville has always punched above its weight when it comes to live music, and that’s one of the reasons I love being there.

So Vampire Weekend was just in last weekend. Next week is Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, and there’s a great community there and music has been a part of our healing. So within one week of Helene, Luke Combs—who’s a major country artist and grew up in Asheville, North Carolina—got together with Eric Church, another native North Carolinian, and within a week’s time, Explore Asheville signed on as the presenting sponsor of what was Concert for Carolina. A month later, [it] took place in Charlotte and drew over 80,000 people and raised more than $24.5 million for recovery efforts and it just continues on.

Billie: You’ve also dealt with post-9/11 recovery in your job, and post-COVID-recovery—

Vic: Am I the problem? [Laughs]

Billie: [Laughs] Oh my God, we solved it! You heard it here first, Vic. But I was actually curious if there was a lesson or a strategy that you’ve learned from dealing with these various challenges that was kind of the same, no matter the issue, no matter the disaster. As a DMO, is there one sort of strategy that you would lean on?

Vic: Yeah. Well, with Afar, as a media outlet, information is power. And so it was really critical in all of those instances to really get clear information, to be able to communicate out and to do that in collaboration with your community.

So everyone has a seat or a role to fill, and it’s really important to know your lane and then be able to communicate that clearly. It’s also important to know when to communicate that and how to communicate that. So for Helene specifically, that came through Thursday night into Friday.

By Saturday at noon, we had stopped all paid advertising and I knew I needed to get out of Asheville and western North Carolina to get information because there was no power, there was no internet. So actually I was able to get to the Moxy Hotel downtown, which had just opened, brand-new hotel, to get to the rooftop and they had powerful Wi-Fi, because they had just gotten new Wi-Fi in. Was able to get in touch with family to be able to ascertain what was happening and drove four hours to get there. Got information, got a shower. And then came back to Asheville the next day. And that actually was when I got in touch with Luke Combs’s folks to talk about Concert for Carolina in that 24-hour period.

But going back to the broader question, it really is knowing when working with partners, so Visit NC is our state tourism office. It was really important for us to be in contact with them. So those relationships really matter. And then in November, when we had Biltmore Estate reopening their doors, we had the return of potable water, which really makes you happy not to have to flush a toilet with creek water.

And also, the historic Omni Grove Park Inn reopening. And then—with clearance from our North Carolina Department of Transportation—with major highways accessible, that’s when we decided to start returning to inviting people to our community to help support our businesses and to help support our creative economy.

And so we started advertising again and we started building that message, at Here at the Heart, and it was people who knew Asheville and western North Carolina, which the message was, plan your return visit with heart, to then be part of the comeback. And now we’re really proud to be working on a brand new TV spot with that Eric Church music bed, that is, we are open and ready. You know, we’re sitting here talking about the United States and welcoming people into our country.

Going back to 9/11, many communities now do what’s called Restaurant Weeks, which are special menus. That actually was created in New York and Washington, D.C. following 9/11.

Which was inviting us as residents to feel comfortable coming out into our community, supporting our area restaurants, and also just feeling comfortable and confident and entertaining ourselves once again. And so you really have to give permission to that.

Billie: That sounds like building, rebuilding tourism—this sounds so corny—but it starts at home. Also, it’s really interesting how you’re talking about the strategy, or the lesson, is building relationships and revisiting those relationships.

It sounds like you have to pull a lot of things together and know who to talk to and develop those relationships throughout in order to get things done and see progress.

Vic: Relationships are really important. I’ve been doing this work for 30 years, of telling a community story, and you know, travel doesn’t happen unless we people, we humans, want to go discover or experience different places, people, and cultures.

And it darn sure doesn’t happen if there aren’t humans to deliver that experience or service. And so it really just does come down to humanity and relationships at the end of the day. And it’s really important to build those relationships so that, when you’re in crisis, you have that communication shorthand.

So almost everybody I know has been in text form, phone calls, also in person. It’s just really important to have those creative connections, those deep relationships for the comeback.

Billie: And how does that translate for the traveler? For visitors who are coming back, who want to have a kind of deeper experience, who want to connect with the local culture and the local residents, what is Explore Asheville doing to help facilitate that kind of interaction and help travelers connect with the communities that they’re visiting in an authentic and respectful way?

Vic: I tell my team all the time that really our job is lovely and simple at the end of the day, and it really is to shine a spotlight on our creative community, our beautiful places, and creative people.

And with so many small businesses on the ground in Asheville, it’s easy for visitors to connect with them. And so exploreasheville.com is the best place online to get information, or on Instagram is @VisitAsheville. And we tell those stories all the time and make those connections. And I think that the tour providers and outfitters that are on the ground interpreting those places and those experiences are really great connections, whether it’s flying bikes on e-bike tours or, one of my favorites, Asheville rooftop bar tours. So we have great, amazing rooftops, with great bartenders and great storytellers, so you can really not only take in the views, but get that personal connection.

Billie: That sounds great. I hadn’t heard of a rooftop bar tour.

Vic: [Laughs] Come on, let’s go to Asheville!

Billie: [Laughs] Let’s go to Asheville! Is there a go-to, did-you-know fact about Asheville that only locals know and someone who just arrived as a visitor wouldn’t necessarily know? Like for me, it was just that there were rooftop bar tours.

Vic: Yeah, there’s so many nuggets. I think one of the ones, I’ve always been drawn to water as well, is that the French Broad River is one of the oldest rivers in the world, and it’s one of the few that flow north. And so that we talk about, you know, flowing in our own direction.

Billie: I love that.

Vic: I’ve been a student of Asheville in North Carolina, you know, every day. And I think one of the aspects of our area in particular is that we are surrounded by some of the oldest, most matronly mountains of the Blue Ridge mountains. And she’s like your grandmother, like the mountains really take care of you.

And they’re lush and beautiful. And then there’s this creative community that has this friction that is really about experience and evolving. And so it’s like this deeply rooted community and area, but it’s got this ever-evolving creative aspect to it that really is distinct.

Billie: Is there anything that you want to make sure that travelers and people in the travel booking industry know about Asheville now?

Vic: Asheville is open and ready and we’re here for it.

Billie: That’s awesome. Well, I can’t wait to go. I’ll see you there. We’ll have a drink on a rooftop.

Vic: Sounds perfect.

Billie: Thank you so much for coming, Vic. This has been really great.

Vic: Thanks for having us. We love our family at Afar.

Billie: Thanks for joining us for this episode of View From Afar. In the show notes, you’ll find links to everything we discussed today, as well as Explore Asheville’s website and social media handles and our recent Asheville coverage. And be sure to follow along this week to hear more interviews with industry experts.

You can find more Views From Afar on afar.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We’re @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great interviews. Subscribing always makes that easy. And be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platforms. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been View From Afar, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland, with assistance from Michelle Baran and Billie Cohen. Music composition from Epidemic Sound. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers Podcast.