Katherine Bartel has a long list of reasons why a NAACP branch started in Haywood County a couple of years ago — and the motives go far beyond protecting only the rights of people of color.

An undercover investigation into illegal gambling resulted in the seizure of more than 300 gaming machines from convenience stores across the state last week.

The tourism industry doesn’t always agree on much. They argue over the best logos and ad campaigns, whether to fund this festival or that one, and who has the best continental breakfast.

Busy season is coming at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino, and management there is working to get all hired up for summer. 

Melanee Lester has been sorting through a 4-inch-high stack of applications on her desk for the last couple of weeks, trying to get Mast General Store fully staffed for the long tourism season ahead.

It happens like clockwork every year. As the calendar creeps toward May, the roads get crowded, lines at the grocery store get longer, and the wait for a table on Friday night mounts. Right on cue, tourist season arrives, seemingly overnight.

SEE ALSO:
• Hospitality help is hard to find
• Tourism’s future in the hands of frontline workers
• BRNHA tackles the $50,000 question of hospitality training
• Casino strategizes to keep good hires on board

It’s a conundrum the best minds in tourism have been trying to crack for decades.

Haywood County is the latest in steady wave of communities across the mountains to shed its long-standing political and cultural hang-ups over alcohol by allowing a countywide vote this fall on whether to legalize beer and wine sales in the county at large.

Google the name of almost any trailhead in Western North Carolina, and you’re likely to come up with pages of links to a plethora of online mentions and trail descriptions aimed at helping readers do just the hike you’re looking for.

Old Town Bank shareholders overwhelmingly approved the sale of the start-up bank headquartered in Waynesville last week, ending its nine-year run as a small independent local bank in light of the changing landscape facing financial institutions in the post-recession world.