Online travel guide RomanticAsheville.com celebrates its 10th anniversary this month. The popular website launched in July 2003 and promotes travel to Asheville and its surrounding areas to more than a million readers annually in 150 countries.
What started
as a hobby for founder and owner Mark File is now a comprehensive 600-page
online travelogue drawing visitors to Western North
Carolina from around the world.
RomanticAsheville.com’s
focus is providing accurate, in-depth guides sprinkled with insider tips. And,
it’s illustrated with plenty of photographs and videos.
“I visit
every place I feature and I'm always carrying my camera,” File says. “I
especially love the outdoors, so our hiking and waterfalls sections are the
biggest – more than 100 pages.”
While the
original focus was strictly Asheville, the website
quickly expanded to include most of the mountains of North Carolina. For example, the Blue Ridge Parkway guide covers 193 miles
from Cherokee to Grandfather
Mountain. Meanwhile, there
are features on more than 20 small towns from Saluda to Beech
Mountain to Highlands,
with many things to do in between.
Recently, RomanticAsheville.com
expanded again with 12 additional waterfall photo guides, 150 new images, and
10 videos. Overall, the website contains more than 2,500 photos showcasing the
beauty of Asheville and Western
North Carolina.
Many photos and
videos are also shared on social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest and
YouTube. In fact, Romantic Asheville’s YouTube channel has logged nearly
900,000 views.
The guide
grows organically based on reader interests. The most popular feature each year
is the fall color guide, highlighted with a week-by-week peak color forecast. All
content is free for readers, funded by advertising partners such as bed-and-breakfasts,
hotels, cabin rentals and attractions.
In its next decade, File plans to
keep growing the site: “Every week I learn about something new in Western North Carolina,” he says. “And while I’ve been to
places like Biltmore, many times, I always discover something with each visit.”
To view the
guide, go to: www.RomanticAsheville.com.
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