Is the Asheville hospitality industry rolling out the red carpet for the July Fourth holiday?

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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This story out of Myrtle Beach got me wondering…

The 4th of July is traditionally the busiest weekend of summer, but the weak economy is producing question marks about how this year’s fourth is shaping up.

In the worst economy in years, many local hotel operators are doing something they wouldn’t have dreamed of doing before. They’re offering special deals and discounts to bring people in on what should be their biggest weekend of the year.

Hotel occupancy on the Grand Strand was strong this past weekend, at 93%, up 3% over the same weekend last year. But to reach that number, hotels had to chop their rates an average of 12 to 15 percent.

Many longtime visitors like Barbara Wilson are reporting prices like they’ve never seen before. “This year, my husband went to the internet and the motels are just running package deals, so we got a really good deal off the internet.”

So, Asheville hotels, restaurants and other tourist destinations — what are you doing to lure tourists to town in one of the toughest economies we’ve ever seen?