The Haywood County Tourism Development Authority is considering an overhaul of the controversial “corridor funds,” a pool of money doled out to promote tourism in particular locales rather than the county as a whole.

Around $600,000 is collected each year from tourists through a 3 percent tax on lodging. A portion of that is given back to three geographic corridors that compose the county — the greater Maggie Valley area, the Waynesville and Lake Junaluska area, and Canton and Clyde.

The formula rewards each corridor with a portion of the room tax collected there. The more tourists that sleep in one corridor over another, the more money it gets from the TDA to promote its own corner of the county. The focus on where a tourist sleeps rather than why they come here and what they do is being re-evaluated by some TDA members, however.

As it turns out, tourists hardly stay put in one corridor. Last Sunday (Oct. 23), two groups of tourists — one sleeping in Maggie Valley and one sleeping in Waynesville — were found shopping in the opposite town.

Nancy Fansler and three girlfriends from Jefferson City, Tenn., regularly vacation at the Waynesville Country Club. Their husbands golf and they shop.

“Have money will travel,” said Brenda Hughes.

But the ladies were found venturing outside the Waynesville corridor last weekend, eating at Joey’s Pancake House and browsing at an arts and crafts festival in Maggie Valley.

Meanwhile, Sandra Crowe and two girlfriends from Jacksonville, Fla., were also shopping while their husbands played golf.

“The men play golf and we women shop and talk and eat and solve all the world’s problems,” Crowe said.

They too flip-flopped, however, turning up on Main Street in Waynesville Sunday afternoon even though their vacation house rental was in Maggie Valley.

Joe and Karen Biere, who were on a week-long Elderhostel golf trip from Pittsburgh, were corridor-hopping as well. They ate breakfast at Joey’s Pancake House in Maggie Valley and dinner at Wildfire in Waynesville on the same day.

Charles and Claire Cox from Macon, Ga., spend a week in Haywood County every year with the primary purpose of day hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This is particularly problematic, as no corridor can claim the national park as its attraction and its attraction alone. But when it comes to the Coxes, chalk one up for Maggie Valley, as the Coxes have a long tradition of staying at Pioneer Village in Maggie.

Another drawing card that can’t be claimed by one corridor over another is the mountains. That’s what keeps Ed Powell, 55, from Mississippi coming back each year.

“We’ve been coming up here 17 years just because of the mountains. They’re beautiful,” said Powell. As luck would have it, the Maggie corridor got credit for this one, too, because Powell was staying there.

While some tourists venture out of the corridor where they sleep and into a neighboring town within Haywood County, some leave the county altogether. For example, Greg and Nancy Branham rented a house in Maggie Valley, but their travels included everything from eating out in downtown Waynesville to horseback riding in Pigeon Forge.

Randy Curry, 40, from the Greensboro area, slept in Maggie Valley but spent most of his time at Harrah’s Casino in Cherokee.

Joanne Harbin from Mobile, Ala., slept in Maggie Valley but picked apples and went on a hayride at an orchard in Henderson County.

“Three mountain-kateers”

Some TDA members and tourism leaders have started questioning the rationale behind corridor funding.

“I hate the word ‘corridor funding.’ It divides us even further,” said CeCe Hipps, who has been director of the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce for the past year. “Since I have been here, corridor funding has done nothing but to factionalize the people who ultimately have the same goal, which is to bring people to Haywood County.”

Hipps was invited to share her view of corridor funding last week with a four-person committee of TDA members studying the corridor funding policy. Hipps cited the recent Apple Festival in Waynesville two weeks ago as an example of what’s wrong with the corridor formula. The TDA awarded the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce a piece of Waynesville’s corridor money to promote the Apple Festival.

The festival was so successful merchants reported sales twice that of last year and restaurants ran out of food, Hipps said.

“What a great problem to have, that your restaurants are running out of food,” Hipps said. But surely all those people weren’t staying in hotels just in Waynesville, Hipps said. Instead, the festival benefited tourism businesses county-wide and should be funded as such, not from a poll designated just for Waynesville .

Canton Mayor Pat Smathers said instead of each town advertising their own festivals with their own pot of corridor money, perhaps they could pool their money and advertise all their festivals together.

“We are off in our own little world trying to put everything together,” Smathers said. “We should be three communities one for all, all for one. The three mountain-kateers.”

Hipps said all the communities should have joined forces to represent Haywood County at the Charlotte travel expo instead of the Haywood chamber having to request a slice of Waynesville’s cooridor money to go.

“If we spent a couple of days and Maggie spent a couple of days and Canton spent a day or two, we could all promote the whole county together,” Hipps said.

In the end, TDA didn’t give Hipps enough money to go to the expo. But if it had — and even if every dime came out of Waynesville’s share of corridor funds — she would have promoted all of Haywood County while she was there, not just Waynesville, she said.

“We don’t have enough product to be able to say ‘Come stay in just Waynesville for a whole week,’” Hipps said. “We need to start promoting things together.”

Last year, when TDA corridor money was awarded separately to Maggie and Waynesville to attend the travel expo in Charlotte, they teamed up to share a booth. When the director of the Maggie Valley Chamber of Commerce showed up for his shift during the second half of the trade show, however, all of Waynesville’s brochures mysteriously disappeared and only Maggie’s brochures were given out. The Maggie Valley Chamber has since hired a new director.

Ken Stahl, owner of the Super Eight and Days Inn hotels, was the first TDA member to publicly broach the topic of revamping corridor money and forming a committee to study it.

“The original intent of corridor funding was to put money back into the corridors so they could be the master of their own destinies,” said Stahl at a TDA meeting three months ago. “But now there is pressure from a lot of different places on how corridor money is administered.”

Stahl questioned whether it was time to “let every project stand on its own.”