Pigeon Forge Tennessee Hotels

Travel officials optimistic about summer season

In Nashville, famed for records and rhinestones, the raucous downtown honkytonks are prepared to serve cold beer and hot songs.

But with gasoline flirting at $4 a gallon, will tourists come this summer?

Tennessee boasts of being within a day's drive of 65 percent of the U.S. population. The state has no beaches like Florida, few museums like Washington, D.C., and no casinos like Las Vegas.

Nevertheless, tourism officials are optimistic Tennessee's convenient location will pay off in travel dollars during the key vacation months that unofficially begin Memorial Day weekend.

"We see people coming here who could have gone on further," said Kim Davis, spokeswoman for the Knoxville Tourism & Sports Corp.

"Gas is just gas," said Steve Smith, owner of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge in Nashville. "People won't stay home."

Dollywood's new Barnstormer uses two pendulum arms to swing riders through a red barn at 45 mph and 81 feet into the air.

"It gives you the sense of weightlessness at the apex," park spokesman Pete Owens said. "It's like a very robust backyard swing."

Dollywood will have four festivals the rest of the year as a way to keep the customers coming.

"We're so close to so many metro areas," Owens said. "We're closer than driving to one of the coasts or down into Florida."

Bob Miller, spokesman at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, said people are ready to travel. The state has up to 50 million visitors a year.

"They've tightened their belts for a couple of years," he said. "You can only hunker down so long."

The 500,000-acre park along the Tennessee-North Carolina border is the country's most visited national park, with 9.4 million annual visitors lured by scenic vistas, bears and nearby blocks of retail shops, T-shirt stores and miniature golf courses.

Knoxville's Davis expects tourists to reduce their travel time and visit the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and other attractions in the city.

"Our downtown is very vibrant," she said. "We come alive in the summer with a host of things for families to do any weekend.

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