February Newsletter: Learning Together

February 16, 2022

Thrive Asheville is engaging the community in learning more about our home - the place we love.

One of the pillars of Thrive Asheville’s work is deep, shared learning about the challenges facing our community. We cannot begin to develop thoughtful and actionable solutions to issues without a strong foundation of understanding. In this newsletter, we invite you to participate in learning more about our area and our work and to be part of the solutions formed in the future.

The Ideas to Action Leadership Forum on Sustainable Tourism has embraced research about tourism on a local and national scale. Franzi Charen presented data around the experience of workers in tourism sector jobs in Asheville, and Bobby Chappell shared examples of other communities in the United States grappling with becoming highly sought-after destinations.

You can watch both presentations and read about tourism planning success experienced by Sedona, AZ, below. We hope this helps you begin to think about how you see Asheville transforming into a destination that keeps our community at the center.

Affordability - A Focus for Workers and Businesses 

The lack of affordability in the Asheville area is a complex and layered problem that affects and involves everyone from workers, to business owners, and even those visiting. The Ideas to Action Leadership Forum on Sustainable Tourism is working to untangle some of these complexities by examining who benefits from tourism now, and who can benefit in the future. At the most recent meeting, the cohort heard from Franzi Charen, the founder and creative director of the Love Asheville, Go Local campaign and a consultant for Project Equity, about the issue of affordability in the leisure and hospitality sector specifically from a workforce perspective.

Charen’s research identified 25,000 jobs in the leisure and hospitality cluster in the Asheville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes the counties of Buncombe, Henderson, Haywood, and Madison. The average worker in this sector is paid $14.90/hour ($30,983/year) and would need to work 65 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment in Buncombe County. Leisure and hospitality jobs, Charen notes, have experienced a 14% increase in wages, but remain at the bottom end of wages as compared to other sectors. This may be due in part to the high percentage of part-time jobs, which could make comparisons to other sectors difficult. Charen also calls attention to the historically high rate at which employees quit jobs in the leisure and hospitality sector at the end of 2021. This has led the industry to experience a highly competitive hiring market in an attempt to fill those positions.

While challenges are a focus of this research, Charen holds space for opportunity, too. Her findings include reflections on ways to improve working conditions and reduce the cost of living for employees. Some local leisure and hospitality employers are actively rethinking the employee experience in this sector and creating intentionally family-friendly workplaces to not only retain workers but to help them thrive.

Watch Charen’s presentation below to understand the full scope of her findings and where our community can go from here. We are grateful to Thrive Asheville donors who made this original data research project possible.

Franzi Charen is a business owner, community advocate, and researcher. She is working in North Carolina to shift employment practices in order to promote the growth of good jobs and democratize wealth. Franzi works nationally with Project Equity as a consultant in data analysis, marketing, and communications.

What's Happening in Top Destinations?

As tourism increases in a destination, often to the point of overtourism, that destination can suffer. Public lands experience overuse and crowding, social infrastructure is strained in areas like housing and transit, and anti-tourism sentiments can create a divide between locals and visitors. Destination stewardship invites a series of practices to create a “big picture, community-centric approach to the careful and responsible management of ‘common pool’ resources.”

Bobby Chappell, a destination stewardship expert, presented the best practices to create more sustainable destinations at the most recent meeting of the Ideas to Action Leadership Forum on Sustainable Tourism. Watch his presentation where he lifts up the importance of cross-sector collaborations, and community involvement in creating a long-term sustainable future.

Watch as Bobby, the Senior Destination Advisor at Mountain IDEAL, explains this concept in more detail and fits this into the context of the Asheville area. Learn more about Mountain IDEAL and Tourism Impact Services and the ways in which destinations can become certified as sustainable.

Sedona, Arizona has a Sustainable Tourism Plan - Asheville can, too!

One of the guiding questions of the Ideas to Action Leadership Forum on Sustainable Tourism is: How can tourism preserve, protect and enhance infrastructure, services, and the environment? The cohort is hoping to leverage tourism so that both visitors and locals benefit while still protecting our area's natural beauty, history, and culture.

Sedona is doing just that with its Sustainable Tourism Plan. This community was at risk of being “loved to death,” so Sedonans took action to keep the area a place to visit for generations to come. The plan follows four pillars of sustainability. These aim to protect: the environment, quality of life of residents, the tourism economy, and the visitor experience. The plan requires cohesive involvement from community members across sectors to achieve 63 specific tactics and timelines that advance Sedona’s goal of building a sustainable destination. The plan also includes a visitor pledge, shared data about the impact of the program, and a list of community partners.

Landlord-Tenant Partnership Program Seeking Final Landlord for Pilot Year

Are you a landlord? Do you know a landlord? Are you interested in learning about housing equity? If the answer to those questions was "yes!" then you should contact Sydney Monshaw, sydney@thriveasheville.org, to learn more about how you can become part of this program. Your participation would mean moving the 25th family from public housing into a higher opportunity neighborhood.