Somewhere in this city right now, a visitor is asking a local a question.
Maybe they’re at the ice cream counter at Clumpies on the North Shore, asking where to have dinner. Maybe they’re at a hotel front desk, asking what’s going on in town. Maybe they’re buying a ticket at the Tennessee Aquarium, or chatting with a bartender on the Southside.
The questions vary. But what happens next doesn’t.
That local — the person behind the counter, the one handing over the room key, the tour guide who’s answered the same question a hundred times and still answers it like it’s the first — is not just doing a job. They are Chattanooga, as far as most visitors are concerned.
The travel industry takes a moment each May to recognize what the rest of the year proves. Travel is not optional. It’s an economic engine, a connector of communities, and in Chattanooga, it’s a livelihood for more than 30,000 people. As National Travel and Tourism Week draws to a close, it feels right to pause and put faces to those numbers.
Hospitality workers make Chattanooga worth the trip
Thirty thousand. That number is worth sitting with. It includes housekeepers who became general managers and dishwashers who became chefs. But it also includes muralists, musicians, food truck owners — people who never thought of themselves as part of the tourism industry. They don’t just live downtown. They come to work from across Hamilton County and around the region. They are a part of every community and might be your next-door neighbor. Tourism is everybody’s business. Our industry creates pathways that a lot of others don’t.
Visitor spending in Hamilton County reached $1.8 billion in 2024. That spending generated $73 million in local taxes — saving the average county homeowner more than $1,200 a year. Every dollar of that runs through the hands of someone who works in this industry.
Condé Nast Traveler readers named Chattanooga the “Friendliest City in America” in 2024. That recognition isn’t about marketing. It came from encounters. Real ones. A visitor from North Dakota who wrote to the Chattanooga Times Free Press recently thanked the service workers they met here — with specific stories. That’s what stays with people.
At Chattanooga Tourism Co., our job is to get people to choose us. We invest in marketing that reaches millions of potential visitors. We recruit events and groups that fill hotel rooms and drive spending. We compete against cities with more resources. We work hard at that. But we have always known it’s the people who show up every day and make this place feel like somewhere worth coming back to.
Chattanooga is a destination. The people who work in this industry are the reason it feels like home.
Susan Harris is the interim chief executive of Chattanooga Tourism Co.
