Cumberland County is about to receive some global exposure after it was announced to the Fayetteville community that a local business would be featured on the newest edition of the Visit North Carolina (Visit NC) Travel Guide, a 118- page guide packed with travel information from all 100 of the state’s counties. 

The opportunity was made possible by  a partnership between DistiNCtly Fayetteville and Visit NC. Visit NC’s Executive Director Wit Tuttell came to Fayetteville to deliver the news in person during the “DistiNCtly Cool Holiday Party” held on Tuesday, Dec. 17 and co-hosted by DistiNCtly Fayetteville & Cool Spring Downtown District. 

“We've really stepped up our game this past year with how closely we work with them and partnering with them with the marketing efforts that we do, the sales efforts that we do and doing more collaboration with them than we've done in prior years, and a lot of good things have come out of it, including this Destination Guide,” shared President and CEO of DistiNCtly Fayetteville Devin Heath. 

DistiNCtly Fayetteville helped arrange a media visit giving Visit NC representatives a tour of some of the county’s tourist attractions before the choice was made to feature one of the top attractions in the area, Fayetteville’s very own Zipquest Waterfall & Treetop Adventure on the cover. 

Over 400,000 copies of the travel guide are printed annually, and the publication has a statewide and global audience which will be able to learn more about Zipquest, Fayetteville and Cumberland County. 

“It will be huge because now, for those that already have Cumberland County and Fayetteville in mind, this continues to reinforce it. And for those who haven't necessarily thought of Fayetteville and Cumberland County, now being right there on the cover will really pique some interest and encourage travelers to explore more and look into Fayetteville, North Carolina,” shared Heath. 

Moving forward, DistiNCtly Fayetteville plans to continue to collaborate with Visit NC on sales efforts and work on establishing partnerships with third party booking sites with an emphasis on international markets, which Heath shared is an underutilized resource for attracting new visitors. Numbers tracked by DistiNCtly Fayetteville show an increase in the number of hotel beds booked after a few months of focusing on those overseas tourists. 

“We've already seen an incredible increase in production from them, and that's through our partnership that we've had with Visit NC. We're seeing a large growth in those different third party sites,” shared Heath. “There's several of them, like Hotelbeds[.com], that specifically target Europe, Latin America, as well as Canada. There's some great opportunity to put us on the map with those international markets that we haven't really had a presence in, certainly not in recent years.” 

Visit North Carolina's 2025 Travel Guide is available to order and view online on their website here.