The formula used by the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority to distribute tourism grants between Maggie Valley, Waynesville and Canton is based on where the tourists spend the night rather than what events draw them here, TDA members said last week after awarding $140,000 in grants.

The Haywood County Tourism Development Authority, a public board, is charged with overseeing some $600,000 generated by a 3-percent tax on lodging. The majority is spent marketing the county as a tourism destination, largely through advertisements in magazines like Southern Living or National Parks Magazine.

But a portion is given back to areas of the county where the tax was collected. That means the Maggie Valley area, home to the largest concentration of hotels and motels, gets the lion’s share.

As a result, some events in other areas of the county fall through the cracks.

For example, Haywood Community College is throwing a large Appalachian music and story telling festival. Since the college technically has a Clyde address, it was limited to the Canton/Clyde pot of funds — which is only $15,500 since relatively few of the county’s hotels are located in Canton or Clyde.

While tourists coming to the festival would surely stay in Maggie and Waynesville, the festival is only eligible for grant money from the Canton/Clyde pot, according to the TDA’s formula. Meanwhile, Waynesville and Maggie Valley would get credit for any tourists who slept in those towns while attending the festival.

TDA board members said it is the only equitable way to do it.

“It is almost impossible to point to a tourist and say, ‘OK, you’re a tourist and you’re a head in a bed tonight and since you’re at the Trout Festival which came out of Maggie corridor money, you need to stay in Maggie tonight,’” said Ken Stahl, TDA member and owner of Motel 8 and Days Inn.

Stahl is the only member on the TDA affiliated with a Waynesville business.

Seven of the nine board members on the TDA run hotels or businesses in the Maggie Valley area. The other two members are Stahl, and Joetta Rinehart with the Lake Junaluska Assembly.

Haywood County commissioners appoint all nine TDA board members. Three seats are reserved for people affiliated with hotels or lodging of more than 20 units, three seats are for people affiliated with lodging of 20 units or less, and three are for people with any tourism-related businesses. One seat in each category comes up for appointment every year. This year, Dorie Pope with Smoky Mountain Retreat and Alice Aumen with Cataloochee Ranch were reappointed after no one else applied for their seat.

The third seat was held by Roy Gass, the manager of Mast General Store in downtown Waynesville. He did not seek reappointment.

Those who applied include: a campground owner from Cruso, Maggie hotel owner Deborah Pierce, Rick Mahooney with J. Arthur’s, a restaurant with both Maggie and Waynesville locations, two members of the FOCUS group in Canton who didn’t represent a tourism-related business, and Wade Reece, owner of the Quality Inn in Maggie.

Commissioners gave the seat to Wade Reece.

While the seat is reserved for someone with any tourism-related business, and not necessarily lodging, Reece had applied for the seat as a representative of his magazine, Smoky Mountain Living.