The Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds has a rich 40 year history of being a place where great memories are made. ThunderTix is proud to be the ticketing software of choice for Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds and we love the way the family friendly venue uses social media to bring about event awareness and cultivate the shared experience.
History
Located on the shores of Lake Chatuge in Hiawassee, Georgia, the Georgia Mountain Fairground has a well earned reputation for family friendly live entertainment and as a getaway vacation destination. The town of Hiawassee, which means "meadow" in Cherokee, is 100 miles North of Atlanta making it an easy trip by car for those in North Georgia.
The first Georgia Mountain Fair was a three-day agricultural exposition taking place at a Hiawassee high school field in 1950. The event's tremendous success quickly outgrew the capacity of the field and in the early 1970s a permanent venue was planned. With local support of the Towns County Lions Club, organizers purchased a large area of land next to Lake Chatuge and in 1978 the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds hosted its first Georgia Mountain Fair.
Since opening, the fairground has continuously expanded to be a premiere venue for live entertainment, annual conventions, outdoor recreation and private events. One may think such a beautiful, rustic locale does not offer 21st century amenities, but that is not the case. The fairground's camping area has all the modern conveniences for luxury motorhomes such as water, electricity, telephone and cable service.
Event Management to Focus on the Business of Entertainment
Festival Ticketing Software & Box Office Management
Advantages of Online Ticketing
Overnight camping under the stars is reason enough to visit, but the fairground is host to popular live music in a wide variety of genres including world-class bluegrass, country, gospel and good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll.
Goodbye to the rhinestone cowboy
This week, Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, Glen Campbell will be performing at the fairgrounds on one stop of his national 'Goodbye Tour'. This last chance to see the legendary country music star is a performance made all the more rare and special by taking place at Georgia Mountain.
Recently, Variety magazine wrote a review of Campbell's 'Goodbye Tour' stop at the Hollywood Bowl:
Campbell conveyed heartbreaking new meaning to a line toward the close of "Galveston" as he spoke the words, "I am so afraid of dying." The final song, "A Better Place" (from "Ghost"), formed a kind of poignant benediction, but not enough to mask what was, indeed, a celebration.
If you live in the North Georgia area, your opportunity to see the "Rhinestone Cowboy" bring his career to a close is this Friday.
Georgia Mountain Fairground is host to many sold out performances, like country music icon Glenn Campbell - How do these events become so well known? Let's find out...
Best practices
The fairground has always been an excellent place to find marquee entertainment, but it is also a place to find the best practices in business critical promotion and event awareness. The Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds management team has a full command of social media as seen by their Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare accounts as well as their easy to use, information rich website.
Responsive and friendly to patrons on-line questions, the fairgrounds strikes the perfect balance between informing the public, selling tickets and cultivating the shared experience. The website has an entire section devoted to photos taken at various events - which is exactly what we recommend all venues commit to doing.
In addition to the visual, Georgia Mountain also has a full grasp of social media's impact on a physical location. The venue is frequently checked into on foursquare and Google Places, with visitors leaving positive reviews for all to read, as seen below.
You and your business would do well to take the time to learn from the shining example set by the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds. We have stressed the importance of claiming your venue on the three major location-based platforms, and our offer to help you do just that for your venue remains open.
Be savvy like the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds
We hope this spotlight on the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds helps you with your event awareness as a great example of the how it’s done. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting many more “spotlights” on events, venues, our beloved ThunderTix users and some “secret” lesser known technical aspects of a successful event