Local tourism is booming. But a behind-the-scenes crisis divides Mississippi Coast leaders.
Biloxi was the place to be for the Fourth of July holiday.
Tourists filled casinos, spent nights in hotel rooms, ate at local restaurants and visited attractions across the Coast over long weekend.
Some hotels were full, exceeding expectation, said Linda Hornsby, executive director of the Mississippi Hospitality & Lodging Association.
And it’s not just a holiday bringing more people to South Mississippi.
Casinos are driving more traffic this summer and people are coming to the Coast to visit family-focused resorts like Margaritaville Biloxi and Centennial Plaza in Gulfport, she said.
Concerts at Mississippi Coast Coliseum are breaking records, said executive director Matt McDonnell, with six shows grossing over $1 million this year. And the summer travel season is just heating up.
On the outside, Coast tourism is booming.
But behind the scenes, resignations, infighting and public drama involving the Harrison County Board of Supervisors has put the regional tourism commission in the spotlight as officials take sides on what the future should look like — and who should be in key roles going forward.
Shakeups, resignation at tourism commission
Coastal Mississippi, the agency charged with promoting tourism across Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, spends millions each year advertising to attract people to the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
It was formed nine years ago and nearly split last year.
Former executive director Milton Segarra resigned and Hancock and Jackson county officials considered pulling out of the regional commission and going it alone to promote their counties.
The president of the commission at the time, Brooke Shoultz, is credited by many in the business community with taking the steps necessary to pull it back together, and she has the backing of Coast casino operators and the Gulf Coast Business Council.
“There was a time from probably November through March that being the president of the Board of Commissioners for Coastal Mississippi was a very tough job,” Shoultz told the Harrison County Supervisors on Tuesday. She is a tax attorney and serving on the tourism commission is an unpaid position, “and there were weeks that I was spending more time in Coastal Mississippi business than I was on my own career. And that’s hard when you’re self employed,” she said.
At that time, she said, she intended to roll off the board when her term was complete on June 30, she said.
“And they hire Judy Young, who has been an exceptional executive director for Coastal Mississippi and things changed and it became a nice place to be,” she said. “We were making some true reforms and really going in the right direction getting the board to be more of an oversight board instead of the day to day management.”
She wanted to serve another term, but the reforms she championed — such as breaking up the powerful committee system — likely contributed to her not being reappointed to the board.
Although Shoultz was unanimously voted to serve another year as president by the commission, she was not appointed to another term on the Coastal Mississippi board by Harrison County Supervisor Connie Rockco. The decision sparked a debate among supervisors in two separate heated exchanges at supervisors’ meetings over the last month.
Tourism board power play?
Coast casino operators and the Gulf Coast Business Council stood up for Shoultz and her reappointment to the board.
“As an industry we unanimously support regional tourism,” said Jonathon Jones, general manager of Harrah’s Gulf Coast. Shoultz brought Coastal Mississippi back “literally from brink of collapse,” he said, and has the commission moving in the right direction.
The local business community gets a lot of feedback from the tourism industry and the operation of Coastal Mississippi, said Ashley Edwards, president of the Business Council.
“Feedback from professional staff members and from former commissioners, who’ve all said that there are some problems with members of the board that have gone around executive staff members and essentially served as executives themselves,” he said.
“Our belief, based on the information we’ve received, is that was one of the primary reasons that Brooke Shoultz was pulled off the board — or I should say was not reappointed to the board — is because she had made some reforms to try to curb that a bit. And so that’s something that’s obviously very concerning.”
Four staff members recently resigned. Edwards said former commissioners who represented Harrison County told him they felt like they were providing accountability on the board, “And once that began, they were unceremoniously removed from the board.”
Supervisor Rebecca Powers accused Rockco at Tuesday’s meeting of appointing liquor and wine distributor Tim Sherman rather than reappoint Shoultz because Sherman is a close friend of Kim Fritz’s husband. Fritz is on the Coastal Mississippi Board.
“You deserve to know the truth,” Powers told the crowd at the meeting.
“It is unfortunate that certain persons have a lack of direct knowledge relating to the operation of the bureau, Fritz told the Sun Herald. “Regional tourism on the Coast has grown each year since its inception in 2013. We have a very competent new executive director. That is what we should be focusing on and I look forward to continuing our good work.”
Under the current legislation that created Coastal Mississippi, supervisors can remove their appointees at any time. And they have done so repeatedly, while other board members chose to leave on their own.
Edwards said this would be a good time for former directors to speak specifically about their experiences and for the supervisors to look at how the governing legislation should be structured, “so that their interests are protected.”
Championing Coast tourism accomplishments
The recent shakeups in the Coastal Mississippi governance board prompted some of the commissioners to ask Young about hiring a brand image company to help accentuate the positive, she said.
She recommended a national communications and crisis strategy company to keep the commission focused on the mission.
Tourism is a $1.6 billion dollar industry on the Coast and Young said it accounts for one-third the total tourism spend in Mississippi.
“Tourism has thousands of front doors,” she said, and everyone working in the industry on the Coast should be championing the accomplishments of South Mississippi.
The commission is starting work on a strategic plan to guide the priorities over the next five years.
Young said she combined the many documents that were drawn up and made the priority those things that were not accomplished in 2021 and 2022.
The idea is to stay authentic to the Coastal Mississippi brand and deliver on the promise of a great vacation, she said.
