The Knoxville News Sentinel is
reporting that the National Geographic Traveler magazine has rated Great Smoky Mountains National Park as one of the "Places with Troubles."
The publication's sixth annual rating of 133 worldwide travel destinations characterized the Smokies as "a national treasure surrounded by a bathtub ring of ugly, unplanned development," especially in and around Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Air pollution is a growing issue. "Between the crowds and the pollution, a mess."
One judge said "the worst excesses of mass tourist development are apparent just outside the national park, in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg," though another said Gatlinburg has done a better job sprucing itself up over the past decade.
Western North Carolina, including Asheville, received much more favorable ratings from the judges, "Western NC is a wonderful place to visit, from the artists and craftspeople in the Asheville area to the adventure tourism of Nantahala Outdoor Center and the many white-water rivers and mountain-biking trails".
The magazine emphasizes that the list isn’t a popularity contest, but rather an assessment of authenticity and stewardship, evaluating the qualities that make a destination unique and measuring its "integrity of place."
The survey of 437 well-traveled experts in a variety of fields, including; historic preservation, site management, geography, sustainable tourism, ecology, indigenous cultures, travel writing and photography, and archaeology, placed the Smokies in the next-to-worst category: "Places with Troubles."
The panel used six criteria in judging the destinations, and weighted them according to importance - environmental and ecological quality; social and cultural integrity; condition of historic buildings and archaeological sites; aesthetic appeal; quality of tourism management; and outlook for the future.
Although there is certainly an element of truth in the magazine's assessment of the region, you can't really put a lot of stock in the rankings. There are 437 experts rating 133 travel destinations. The problem is that experts were only allowed to rank destinations they were familiar with. Therefore, I would argue, individual destinations were not judged on the same scales due to the number and mix of experts that ranked a given destination.
You can read the full National Geographic Traveler article by
clicking here.
Jeff
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