Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel was built in the Arts and Crafts style.

In 1909, Edwin Wiley Grove and his son-in-law Fred Seely bought approximately 400 acres near Sunset Mountain to build a grand hotel.

[3] After rejecting plans from several prominent architects, Seely (who had no formal training in construction or architecture) made his own sketch of the hotel, which Grove approved of.

[4] The hotel was outfitted with furnishings from the Roycrofters of East Aurora, New York, and built of rough granite stones.

[3] In the 1920s a young lady fell from a fifth story balcony at the inn and died on the palm court floor.

[8] The diplomats and their staff were allowed guarded trips to town, where they would purchase goods from the local merchants.

[8] William Howard Taft resigned from the United States Supreme Court in the resort's Great Hall in 1930.

[13] As of 2013, Supreme Court plans call for relocation to the Grove Park Inn in the event of a nuclear attack.

The event continues to be hosted at the resort annually with finalists on display to the public in the halls each November and December.

Other notable visitors include F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller, Jerry Seinfeld, Sanjay Gupta, Harry Houdini, Will Rogers, Jack Nicklaus, George Gershwin, Margaret Mitchell, Billy Graham, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jordan, William Shatner, and Don Cheadle.

[3][26][27] In Lee Smith's Guests on Earth: A Novel (which is about Zelda Fitzgerald and published in 2013), the central character often makes references to the Omni Grove Inn as the novel takes place in Asheville, North Carolina.