Hancock County Tourism is shutting down. It still owes $35K to Cruisin’ The Coast

The Hancock County Tourism Development Bureau, which has long advertised its coastal communities to growing crowds of visitors, is closing.

The agency will shut down at the end of September after a series of financial challenges, including more than $35,000 in missed payments it owes Cruisin’ The Coast.

Bill Cotter, president of Hancock County Tourism’s Board of Directors, said lack of funding and the money owed to Cruisin’ put the Bureau in a tough position.

“It just slowly got into a survival mode,” he said.

The decision comes as tourism surges in Hancock County. Tax revenue from stays at hotels, motels and short-term rentals has more than doubled since 2020, according to Bureau records, and leaders are touting renewed Amtrak service as another boost.

Hancock County Tourism was funded for years through lodging taxes paid by visitors. But the agency faced its first test in 2018, when the county Board of Supervisors diverted the lodging tax revenue to a regional tourism bureau. That group, called Coastal Mississippi, promotes all three coastal counties.

The move is also raising questions among some Bay St. Louis leaders. Some have said Hancock County Tourism could have been more transparent and have wondered how much the regional bureau will directly support the community.

“Taxpayers deserve answers to this,” Bay St. Louis Councilman Kyle Lewis said.

Others argued that relying on the regional tourism bureau, which has a larger budget and can spend more on advertising, makes the most financial sense.

“We’re marketing the Gulf Coast from state line to state line,” said Hancock County Administrator Jimmie Ladner, who also serves on the regional tourism board. “It’s just better for everybody.”

Bay St. Louis leaders raise questions

The decision to shut down follows some turmoil at Hancock County Tourism, which has long sponsored Cruisin’ the Coast. Two Board members, including former Board President Rachel Knight, have resigned in recent months. Cruisin’ Executive Director Woody Bailey sent the agency a demand letter in August seeking $35,700 for payments that Hancock County Tourism failed to make between 2022 and 2024.

Knight declined to comment. Bailey said he was working with the Board to fix the issue.

Hancock County Tourism fell behind on Cruisin’ payments when its former executive director, Myrna Green, became ill, Cotter said. Green died last year. Colleagues recalled her as a dedicated tourism advocate who guided the county’s resurgence after Hurricane Katrina and helped transform the region into a hotspot for visitors from across the South.

Bay St. Louis typically allocated $22,500 a year to Hancock County Tourism. City Clerk Mike Reso said $20,000 of that amount was intended for Cruisin’ the Coast, which hosts annual events in the city.

Lewis said he wants to know how Hancock County Tourism used the money from Bay St. Louis. “If we’re giving taxpayer dollars to something like that we deserve to know how that money was spent,” he said.

Cotter, who had served two previous terms on the Board and was appointed again last year, said in an interview this week that it was unclear what the money intended for Cruisin’ was spent on. He said the Board had been working to investigate it and added that much of the agency’s budget this year covered day-to-day operations.

The Board began to discuss closing the agency this summer, according to meeting minutes, and notified city leaders in early September. Bay St. Louis Councilman Jordan Bradford said Hancock County Tourism should have been more open about the decision.

“I kind of just wish there was more communication about what their plans were,” he said, “as well as the reasons behind it.”

Next steps

The county’s lodging tax is projected to generate more than $400,000 this year. Ladner said that number is around 3 percent of Coastal Mississippi’s annual budget.

He also said that before 2018, when the tax funded Hancock County Tourism, the agency used most of the money on salaries and insurance and had less to spend on advertising.

“The truth of the matter is they didn’t have enough funding to operate effectively,” Ladner, a longtime supporter of regional tourism efforts, said. Coastal Mississippi, he added, can afford multi-million dollar marketing campaigns that advertise the Coast to potential tourists as far away as Dallas.

The county plans to work with the state Legislature next session to let Hancock County Tourism, which was created by state law, go dormant. But the agency is not disbanding completely: Leaders are asking the Legislature to put Hancock County Tourism’s operations on hold so it can easily start again if the county ever wants it to.

Cotter said the Board hopes to pay Cruisin’ by the end of the month and is seeking the money through an insurance policy.

Tourism leaders are working with other local groups that may take over events that Hancock County Tourism helped run, including Wednesdays at the Depot and Taste of Hancock County. Hancock County Tourism Executive Director McKenzey Northington also said she is trying to keep the visitors center, which has attracted more than 4,700 people this year, in the Historic L&N Train Depot in Bay St. Louis.