In 2015, Hamilton County’s tourism industry raked in a record $1 billion, and more than 2.2 million nights worth of hotel rooms were booked in metro Chattanooga.
For all the rah-rah back patting those statistics elicited at the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau, Cole Sweeton, 32, and David Castaneda, 29, say the Scenic City could be doing a better job at driving guests to partake in local arts and cultural activities.
“When visitors come to Chattanooga for the first time, …it looks like, in a lot of regards, a simple, boring city to drive through,” says Sweeton, a freelance graphic designer. “They don’t know where to go to listen to live music or find comedy or get into cocktail culture.”
With their app-based audio streaming service Undaground, Sweeton and Castaneda hope to change that by providing a single platform that can promote all aspects of Chattanooga’s cultural diversity to residents and tourists alike.
“What Undaground does is to offer a pathway to all the stuff in the city,” says Sweeton, Undaground’s chief creative officer. “It says, ‘Here’s where the food comes from and how it’s prepared. Here’s where you can listen to music after dinner. Here’s where to catch a comedy show. Here are the musicians. Here’s what they like.'”