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Visiting the High Country? Stay Atop Sugar Mountain, Local TDA Promotes Lodging With Winter Video

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Nc71GzZhAHE[/youtube]

By Jesse Wood

Nov. 27, 2013. The Sugar Mountain Tourism Development hired Randy Johnson, a nationally-known travel writer, to promote winter lodging at Sugar Mountain with a video that focuses on Sugar Mountain as a premiere skiing destination on the East Coast.

“Sugar is a bonafide big mountain. With more than a 120 acres of skiing and 20 slopes of trails, it’s the biggest ski resort in the Deep South. Sugar also hosts the region’s greatest vertical drop: 1,200 feet from a mile-high summit. That creates the longest run in the region, more than a mile and a half from the summit all the way to the base lodge,” Johnson says in the video’s opening. “Sugar is true sweet spot of skiing.”

seesugarThis video and the website www.seesugar.com are an attempt to increase lodging bookings through the Internet and create a network that connects rental operators with the rest of the world. The website features “fun things to do” and a dining guide, along with, of course, a listing of places to stay and much more.

“People don’t want to starve, and they don’t want to be bored,” said Hiram Lewis, who sits on the TDA board.

A group of rental operations atop Sugar Mountain pay taxes into the local TDA, and the TDA in turn focuses on attracting people to stay atop Sugar Mountain. While this video focuses on the skiing opportunities atop Sugar, the TDA also mixes it up according to the season.    

During the fall and summer it broadens the perspective as to the offerings of the High Country – such as waterfalls, ASU football games, wine tours and so forth. The primary goal, though, is to make folks aware of Sugar Mountain and provide them lodging before they explore the High Country.

Lewis said that lodging with a full kitchen, outfitted with a barbeque grill and deck with a 20-mile view doesn’t cost anymore than a hotel and is a more “authentic way to visit the mountains.” Although, he adds that there is nothing wrong with hotels, but there is an allure to grilling out on the patio in a relaxed atmosphere before attending, for example, a concert later in the evening.

In any event, Lewis said the goal is to get 50,000 people to watch the film. Check it out here and share it with your friends, family and other folks you know might be visiting the High Country.

As Lewis quipped, it might be better than them staying on your couch. 

Also, check out www.seesugar.com.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Nc71GzZhAHE[/youtube]