1. SmallSmall MarketMarket MeetingsMeetings November 201318
Early on, the city’s mountain air
was a prescription doctors wrote
for those with tuberculosis and
other ills. Henry Ford, Thomas
Edison and Harvey Firestone made
Asheville the launch pad for their
“board meetings,” car camping
trips into the mountains.
What has brought visitors to
Asheville in more recent times is
theBiltmoreEstate,thepalatial250-
room home of George Vanderbilt,
the largest private home ever built
in America. Last year, more than
1 million visitors trooped through
the estate.
jobs,” said Cat Kessler, public rela-
tions and marketing coordinator
for the Asheville CVB. And when
they can’t find work that they want,
“they make their own niche,” she
said.
That is one explanation for the
As Jonas Gerard remembers, he
fell under Asheville’s spell within
20 minutes of rolling into the North
Carolina mountain town from
Miami seven years ago. Enamored
of Asheville and “the arts scene,
the people, the friendliness, the
hippies … the whole thing” he
decided to resettle in a city that’s
way smaller but perhaps no less
colorful and lively than the south
Florida metropolis that had been
his home for 38 years.
Many Asheville transplants’ sto-
ries are similar to Gerard’s. They
came, they saw, they fell for the city
and they moved to it. The moun-
tain town’s magnetic personality
pulled them in.
“People don’t come here with
jobs; they don’t come here for
large number of entrepreneurs and
the independent spirit of western
North Carolina’s largest town.
Ford and Edison among early fans
Tourists have been trekking to
Asheville for more than a century.
By Vickie Mitchell
Courtesy Biltmore Estate
Above, at the Biltmore Estate, groups
can dine in gardens, in barns and
under trees. Below, foodies find
plenty of choices. Asheville has 250
independent restaurants.
Courtesy Asheville CVB

2. 19SmallSmall MarketMarket MeetingsMeetingswww.smallmarketmeetings.com
Asheville CVB
36 Montford Ave.
Asheville, NC 28801
800-280-0005
www.exploreasheville.com
Kudos: Omni Grove Park Inn
and the Grand Bohemian Hotel
Asheville have been ranked top
in the resort and hotel catego-
ries by Conde Nast Traveler’s
Readers Choice poll. Last year,
Fodor’s named Asheville a Best
Destination for Fall Foliage. The
city became America’s first
Green Dining Destination in
November 2012. Outside maga-
zine named Asheville among
America’s best river towns.
Asheville’s reign as Beer City
USA continues. In 2012 the city
tied with Grand Rapids, Mich., in
Examiner.com’s online poll.
What’s new: Craft beer makers,
Sierra Nevada and New Belgium,
will build breweries in Asheville.
Blue Kudzu, which makes sake,
opened in September in the
River Arts District. The Grove
Park Inn completed $25 million
in improvements in time for its
100th anniversary this year. The
U.S. Cellular Center has shifted
its box office and created a new
entrance. Downtown Asheville
has gotten edgier with the arrival
of an Aloft hotel on Biltmore
Avenue and a Hotel Indigo near
the convention bureau’s offices.
Location: Asheville is in western
North Carolina, two hours west
of Charlotte, N.C.; two hours
southeast of Knoxville, Tenn.;
2.5 hours north of Columbia,
S.C.; and 3.5 hours northeast of
Atlanta.
Getting there: Asheville
Regional Airport is the largest
airport in western North Carolina
and is served by four major car-
riers with flights to nine hubs.
Interstates 40 and 26 intersect
on Asheville’s edge.
A full-bodied destination
In the last decade, Asheville
has grown into a more full-bodied
vacation destination. Its thriving
downtown is packed with home-
grown restaurants, independent
bookstores, arts and crafts galleries
and inventive retailers. Artists like
Gerard have found it a genial place,
especially with the development of
the River Arts District, which has
turned an old industrial area along
the French Broad River into a rea-
sonable rent district for art studios
and galleries.
Downtown Asheville is so ener-
getic that an average Wednesday
night finds sidewalks packed with
shoppers, diners and dogs. A seat
near a front window or at a sidewalk
cafe is all that’s needed for dinner
with a show. A “nun” on a unicycle
pedals by, a bar on wheels heads
up a hill and a purple LaZoom
tour bus drives past, packed with
partiers.
“This,” said Kessler, looking out
on the lively scene, “is as slow as
it gets.”
Hotels are a good mix
What also gives Asheville appeal
as a meeting place is the variety
of its conference hotels. Within
a 10-minute drive, visitors find a
100-year-old resort, two luxury
inns, a modern resort with an
emphasis on sports and two well-
located conference hotels.
The century-old resort is the
AAA Four Diamond Grove Park
Inn, now part of Omni Resorts.
With 534 guest rooms and 55,000
square feet of meeting space, the
resort serves as a convention center
for Asheville, a city without one.
Asitapproachedthisyear’s100th
anniversary, Grove Park made $25
million in improvements. Most
noticeably changed is the hotel’s
lobby, the Great Hall.
Despite the 24-foot-high ceilings
and a wall of windows facing west,
the 120-foot-long Great Hall was
dark and cavernous. But when the
hotel moved its front desk, it also
uncovered three large windows.
The added natural light, and addi-
tional lighting fixtures, brightened
what must be one of America’s first
“great rooms.”
The room’s charm remains,
anchored by granite-boulder fire-
places with openings 14 feet wide,
seven feet deep and seven feet tall.
Many of the original 700 pieces
of furniture and 600 copper light
mixtures made for the hotel by the
Roycrofters remains in use today. It
is the largest collection of Arts and
Crafts furnishings in the world,
valued at more than $4 million.
Next to the lobby, a new restau-
rant, Edison, pays homage to the
inventor and former guest with
dozens of vintage-style light bulbs
for overhead lighting. Local prod-
ucts are emphasized, especially
craft beers.
A number of guest rooms have
been refurbished and meeting
spaces have been upgraded with
newer technology. Retail shops
have been opened near the confer-
ence space in the Vanderbilt Wing,
one of two modern wings added to
the 1913 hotel.
Although the Grove Park Inn
is edged by the historic Montfort
neighborhood and is a 10-min-
ute drive from downtown, it
feels sequestered. From its Sunset
Terrace, just off the Great Hall, its
Donald Ross-design golf course
splays out to the west, toward the
city and the sunset.
Four-Diamond experience
On the other side of the city,
in an equally serene location, sits
the AAA Four Diamond Inn on
Biltmore Estate. Opened in 2001
on the 8,000-acre Biltmore Estate,
the 210-room hotel is perched on
a hill above bustling Antler Hill
Village, Farm and Winery.
Paths lead to the village and its
ice cream shop, gift shops, outdoor
outfitter and Cedric’s Pub, named
for the Vanderbilts’ St. Bernard.
The inn has nearly 6,000 square
feet of its own meeting space, but
it also puts groups within a few
miles of venues that the Biltmore
has fashioned from the estate’s
original buildings.
There’s Antler Hill Barn, with
a covered, open-air pavilion
bounded by grassy green court-
yards. Lioncrest is a converted dairy
barn, with a ballroom ceiling that
is accented by the barn’s exposed
timbers. It sits across a drive from
Deerpark, whose four long narrow
Courtesy Asheville CVB
Artists sell their work outside down-
town’s Grove Arcade.
Courtesy Asheville CVB
Asheville is bordered by the
Blue Ridge Mountains.

3. SmallSmall MarketMarket MeetingsMeetings November 201320
Among Asheville’s advantages
is a longer-than-usual list of after-
hours entertainment ideas. Who
would think a town of 83,000
would be packed with so many
options? Here are a few.
t Spend the afternoon in the
River Arts District. RAD is down
the hill from downtown Asheville,
an old industrial zone in the French
Broad River’s flood plain. Cheaper
rents have artists flocking there
like migratory birds. Already, more
than 160 of them have set up shop
in about 25 industrial buildings.
The district stretches several
miles, with studios and galleries
in clumps.
Among the highlights is Jonas
Gerard Fine Art. Gerard is happy to
book his 5,000 square-foot gallery/
studio for receptions; the lively art-
ist might be game to give a paint-
ing demonstration.
His abstract acrylics lend gaiety
to any occasion, and at Gerard’s,
visitors are advised that it is “Ok
to touch” his paintings.
Gerard’s next-door neighbor,
the Clingman Cafe, is one of six
restaurants in the district; there are
reports that at least two more are
on the way. 12 Bones, a barbecue
spot open only at lunch (President
Barack Obama has eaten there
twice) and the White
Duck Taco Shop are
localfavorites.AtWedge
Brewing, downstairs
from an art studio next
to the railroad tracks,
patrons unwind with an
Iron Horse IPA on a patio
punctuated by art.
www.riverartsdistrict.
com
t Beer lovers
should visit at least a
couple of Beer City USA’s
craft breweries. There are
about a dozen in Asheville and
another dozen within a short drive.
An Asheville Brews Cruise lets you
leave the driving to someone else.
Or drive yourself to Asheville’s
southern edge and see the city’s
first brewery, Highland Brewing
Co. Its big warehouse of a home
allows the 19-year-old brewery
to have parties and concerts,
indoors and out. If you’d rather
stay in town, the front patio at
Wicked Weed Brewery, down-
town’s newest brewery, is a good
place to people -watch on Biltmore
Avenue.
www.wickedweedbrewing.com
www.highlandbrewing.com
t There’s high adventure a
half mile from downtown Asheville
at the Crowne Plaza Tennis and
Golf Resort. On a swath of 125
acres, bordered by highways and
across the French Broad River
from downtown, the resort is
home to the city’s only urban zip
line and an adventure park.
Two years ago, Asheville resi-
dent Jeff Greiner, whose family
has long been in the river rafting
business, turned the front nine of
the resort’s 18-hole golf course
into a series of 10 zip lines that
make use of 150-year-old white
oak trees and massive tulip pop-
lars. The trees were handled with
care as platforms were built; an
arborist monitors their health.
The zip line is a short walk from
the Crowne Plaza, making it a nat-
ural for an afternoon of team build-
ing, especially as resort guests are
offered discounts.
The day can end with meeting
attendees zipping along on side-
by-side zip lines that race down
from the course’s tower to a plat-
form that steps from the hotel’s
meeting rooms.
Greiner’s newest offering,
Treetops Adventure Park, is an
aerial obstacle course in a cluster
of trees a few yards from the start
of the zip line tour. It has four lev-
els, each of increasing height and
challenge. From the ground, the
park looks like the Swiss Family
Robinson hooked up with a band
of spiders. Along the aerial routes
are some 50 challenges — climb-
ing a rope net or zipping through
the trees in an airborne kayak.
Picnic tables below allow those
who don’t go in for aerial tricks
to watch friends and family that
do. Both facilities are open to the
public.
www.wildwaterrafting.com
www.ashevilletreetopsadventurepark.com
Paint the town, sip craft brews and zip through trees
Courtesy Asheville CVB
Courtesy Asheville CVB
Courtesy Adventure Center of Asheville
An urban zip line is a half mile from
downtown.The Wicked Weed Brewery on Vanderbilt Avenue
is downtown’s newest brewery.
More than 160 artists have galleries and
studios in the River Arts District.

4. 21SmallSmall MarketMarket MeetingsMeetingswww.smallmarketmeetings.com
dining areas form a square and
have French doors of glass that
open to a large, landscaped inte-
rior courtyard.
Two other hotels, near the
Biltmore’s entrance, offer differ-
ent moods and price points.
The Grand Bohemian Asheville
looks like it has always been a
part of historic Biltmore Village,
a Tudor-style village where many
Biltmore employees lived. Today
the village is a shopping and din-
ing district.
The 104-room Bohemian, part
of the Kessler Collection, opened
four years ago and was built from
scratch. Inside, the style is that of
the baronial Biltmore, a re-creation
of a hunting lodge that George
Vanderbilt would have built for
himself. Antlers are everywhere —
rows o little racks along the walls of
the dining room, clusters of racks
form chandeliers.
The hotel’s main meeting space,
the 2,200-square-foot Kessler
Ballroom, drips with crystal chan-
deliers and gold leaf accents, added
by artisans. A 1,100-square-foot
salon links the ballroom to the
Tryolean Terrace, an outdoor space
that can be used, with coverings
and heaters, almost year round.
Modest hotelhas Biltmoreties
For those who seek a more mod-
erate stay near the Biltmore, the
197-room Doubletree by Hilton
Asheville-Biltmore sits near the
front gate of the Biltmore Estate.
It is owned by a Vanderbilt descen-
dant, who has preserved his fami-
ly’s history by using rich Vanderbilt
red in the hotel’s newly done decor
and hanging old photos from the
estate in the hallways. There’s also
a life-size model of a Jersey cow in
a meeting area corridor — a nod to
the old Biltmore Dairy.
The pride extends to a $3 million
renovation, which spruced up 160
rooms and the lobby. Among the
property’s surprises is a landscaped
courtyard for receptions.
Like the Biltmore and the Grove
Park Inn, the Crowne Plaza Tennis
and Golf Resort is secluded without
being far from town. The 125-acre
resort is across the French Broad
River from downtown.
The resort is known for its sports
complex, which includes 16 out-
door and four indoor tennis courts
that draw tennis competitions, a
lap pool, two outdoor pools, a large
workout center and a spa.
Three years ago, the 274-room
property added a 16,600-square-
foot expo center. A covered veranda
on one side can handle dinners of
up to 200; there, guests can enjoy
the action on the resort’s zip line
(See sidebar, page 20).
A half mile away in down-
town Asheville, the 275-room
RenaissanceAshevilleiswelllocated
a block from the start of Asheville’s
bustling storefronts and a block off
I-240. In parking-starved down-
town, the Renaissance’s roomy sur-
face parking lots, free to guests, are
a popular perk.
A mod new lobby makes the
Renaissance feel more like New
York than North Carolina, and
like the Grove Park Inn, the hotel
has used local artists’ work in its
decorating.
Most of the 21,000 square feet of
meeting space is on the lobby level,
and the ballroom benefits from
an adjacent covered patio, soon
to have an upgrade. Demand for
meeting space is so strong that the
hotel turned its outdoor pool into
a second ballroom. The outdoor
pool was replaced with an indoor
saline pool.
Uptick in attendance
Because Asheville is such a
desirable destination, most asso-
ciations and other organizations
see an uptick in attendance when
they meet there.
“Ninety percent of the discus-
sions that we are having with clients
are ‘we need overflow,’” said Pola
Laughlin, sales manager for the
Renaissance.
Late spring through fall is a busy
time; rates and availability are bet-
ter in the winter, when weather is
usually temperate, although access
through the mountains can some-
times pose challenges.
Still, most find it a worthwhile
challenge to face, because, as the
Crowne Plaza’s Angela Beattie
said, “Everyone wants to come to
Asheville.”
Courtesy Inn on Biltmore Estate
Courtesy Grand Bohemian Asheville
Courtesy Grove Park Inn
From top, the Great Hall at Grove Park Inn is brighter after a refurbishment; a
private dining room’s red decor whets appetites at the Grand Bohemian Asheville;
and the Inn at Biltmore Estate sits above the river valley.