Nearly two weeks after the Southeast U.S. was hit by historic flooding from Hurricane Helene, Asheville, North Carolina, remains largely without power and water, and hoteliers in the region say it will be a long road back to normalcy for the city.
Amy Michaelson Kelly, founding principal and chief operations officer at Atlanta-based Hatteras Sky, which owns two boutique hotels in the market, said Asheville has a special combination of hospitality, independence and creativity — traits the city's businesses and residents are leaning into as they continue to work through recovery.
"It's a unique community of people who care about each other and support each other," she said. "There's unique arts, unique natural appeal, then you layer that with Southern hospitality and a spirit of free thinking."
Hurricane Helene hit Asheville on Sept. 27, bringing with it heavy, prolonged rainfall, historic flooding and devastation that killed at least 231 people across six states, with North Carolina among the hardest hit. The Associated Press reports that is enough to rank it among the deadliest storms of the past 50 years.
More than 300,000 people remain without power as of this week, including 140,000 in North Carolina.
Asheville, a city of almost 94,000, has seen power restored to some spots but not everywhere. The area is expected to be without water indefinitely as miles of waterlines were destroyed and damage to roadways make it difficult for crews to even get to the areas that need repairs.
Hoteliers step up
Even without those basic utilities, Kelly said the larger of Hatteras Sky's two properties in the city — the 70-room The Radical Hotel, which is operated by Driftwood Hospitality Management — has been housing out-of-town emergency responders who were in need of last-minute accommodations and are accustomed to dealing with less-than-luxurious stays.
"They bring a lot of their own provisions because they're used to this but we also provided things like lanterns, snacks, fresh fruits and the things they need but aren't getting because honestly they're too busy" trying to help the community, she said.
Kelly said those emergency responders are filling the vast majority of the hotel and came at the last minute at the request of Asheville's city attorney.
"I just said 'yes' and we figured out the details after that because we know this recovery has to take place and it has to be fast," Kelly said.
Both The Radical and the 20-room Zelda Dearest escaped major damage in the storm, she said. Floodwater levels surged two and a half feet and covered the first floor of The Radical, but the property suffered no damage to its second-floor lobby or guest rooms despite being in the heavily damaged River Arts district of the city.
Kelly said there's no timetable for how long The Radical will host emergency responders or how long until it reopens to more traditional demand. Part of the problem is the continued lack of water in the community and the question of how long it will take to fully get back on its feet to once again be a tourist destination. On top of that, The Radical also was working through an ongoing construction project that will be delayed by the storm.
But recovering tourism revenue is not the top priority in Asheville at the moment, Kelly said.
"The mood hasn't really pivoted that way, yet," she said. "It obviously will someday, but right now, we're kind of in this healing phase. I think we're still figuring out, in some ways, what we're up against."
Grand Bohemian Asheville closed
During the peak of Helene's path through Asheville, five feet of floodwater surged into the lobby of the 104-room Grand Bohemian Asheville. Mark Kessler, president and chief operating officer of the Orlando, Florida-based Kessler Collection, the hotel's owner-operator, said the best estimates now are that the Grand Bohemian will remain closed six to nine months.
Kessler traveled to Asheville to take stock of the damage and said he was blown away at the scale of destruction.
"It's like, you see the pictures, and you're like 'OK, well, I get it,' but really when you're there and you feel it, you step out of your car and there's nobody there. There's nothing moving. It's a very eerie feeling," he said.
Kessler said seeing the Asheville community and the hotel in that state almost felt like the loss "of a family member for some period of time."
Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer "explained it in some of her interviews as a post-apocalyptic," Kessler said. "It's like why is this tractor trailer turned on its side, leaning up against a light pole in front of McDonald's? Am I in a movie set? It's surreal."
Because of the floodwaters, the Grand Bohemian saw significant damage to its lobby-level furniture and fixtures and six cars on its first-floor garage. Kessler Collection had a hurricane preparedness plan in place that included putting up flooding panels, but the exceptionally high water levels limited their effectiveness, Kessler said.
"The waters were 10 or 12 feet above the flood panels, above historic highs," he said, adding guests were evacuated by the time the storm hit.
Work to get the Grand Bohemian back online will continue with significant electrical and mechanical work. A remediation crew — the same crew that restored the Opryland Hotel in 2010 — is already on-site.
"We have a very detailed plan, so whenever there's a catastrophic event like this we find the right partners to help make an assessment of the situation and a game plan going forward," Kessler said.
He added recovery efforts in Asheville are already making a noticeable difference. The city felt like a ghost town on Monday, Sept. 30, but was buzzing with activity as people started to rebuild the next day. There are already 40 people on-site at the Grand Bohemian working to restore it.
In terms of the hotel's staff, Kessler said for now the 108 employees of the Grand Bohemian are still on payroll and are either dealing with the personal aftermath of the storm, assisting on property with the recovery or have been transferred to other Kessler properties within driving distance.
Kelly said the reality is there simply won't be work for a lot of hotel employees in Asheville for the foreseeable future, including employees at The Radical. She said there will be work for some, depending on their roles, but there is also a Gofundme fundraiser started for employees in need.
She said she's also worried about the many artisans that populate Asheville's River Arts district.
"They're struggling right now because this is the busy season," she said. "October is the biggest month, and there's a lot of people that function throughout the year at a moderate level then it's gangbusters in October through December."
But ultimately, both Kelly and Kessler believe Asheville will bounce back to being the vibrant community they know it as.
"One day when we get back to normal, I'm hopeful and I believe that it's really going to be better than ever," Kelly said. "Time will tell."
A focus on preparedness
Even as areas of North Carolina and other portions of the Southeast U.S. contend with the aftermath of Helene, another major storm is bearing down on Florida. As of press time, Hurricane Milton has grown in strength to a Category 5 storm with winds up to 175 miles per hour, the potential to create life-threatening storm surges and a trajectory that passes over some of the state's largest population centers, including Orlando and Tampa Bay.
Jamison Conrey, vice president of engineering, capital projects and risk management at Atlanta-based Hospitality Ventures Management Group, makes hurricane preparedness a big part of his job. But he said there's no accounting for all variables, especially when historically strong winds or record levels of flooding are involved.
He said HVMG's hotel operations portfolio managed to avoid the worst impacts from Hurricane Helene, although one Georgia property was hit by a downed tree in the storm. Knowing high levels of flooding were expected helped guide the company's response to the storm.
"We went ahead and made sure to do things like clearing drains on rooftops and addressing impact areas where water could come in prior to the storm," Conrey said.
Kessler said sometimes there's only so many proactive steps you can take given the time frame you have to work with. The Kessler Collection team had roughly a half day's notice of what to expect with Helene, which didn't leave enough time to remove all the first-floor furniture from the Grand Bohemian Asheville.
"With 12 hours notice and the magnitude, there's nothing any of us could've really done," he said.
Conrey agreed that regardless of the level of preparedness, everyone is ultimately "at the mercy of Mother Nature at that point." He added that hotels in cities like Asheville were put in a no-win situation.
"Everything kind of aligned for a perfect storm going through those northern areas," he said.
Conrey's been keeping an eye on Hurricane Milton just like any storms that hit the areas. He said it always comes down to "staying in that prepared mode."
With two potentially historic storms striking within the span of two weeks, some would question the outlook on investing in the area, and indeed rising insurance costs have been an issue in recent years.
But Kessler said his company, which has historically been geographically clustered in states such as Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas, will continue to focus there; the good far outweighs the bad.
"I'd say long term, people are still going to visit these areas, and you want to be where people want to be," he said. "I don't think people's [travel] habits are going to change."