Standing at the top of Georgia’s Lookout Mountain offers a genuine setting–and feeling–of getting away. Its hillsides are covered in pine, birch and oak trees, and at nearly 2,400 feet in elevation, the mountain provides views of seven states. As my wife and I rose above the clouds to the summit of Lookout Mountain, where Cloudland at McLemore Resort awaited us, we were left nearly speechless. We could only say to each other, “Look at that.”

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Cloudland boasts two golf courses and a new Curio Collection by Hilton hotel that opened in February, the combination of which the resort hopes will help stake its claim as a new golfing destination in the southeast. The lucrative golf travel business has been booming since the pandemic: The National Golf Foundation reports that in 2023, a record 531 million rounds were played, surpassing the 529 million high set in 2021, which spiked because golf was one of the few group activities that allowed for social distancing. Furthermore, the NGF reports that “rounds are trending more than 10 percent ahead of the five-year, pre-pandemic average from 2015-19.”

While mountain golf as a concept isn’t new, good mountain golf is difficult to come by because of the terrain. The developers of Cloudland, however, are native to the area, which already boasts a handful of elite private golf courses that take advantage of Lookout Mountain’s natural beauty.

The Cloudland development was sparked by a desire to take advantage of its setting and its reputation as a hub for outdoor enthusiasts, Duane Horton, president of Scenic Land Company, the developer of Cloudland, told Observer.

The addition of the Cloudland Hilton hotel is the culmination of a years-long process. Scenic Land........

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