Picture yourself strolling with your morning coffee along 26 miles of white-sand beaches. The sun is already shining, and only gentle waves lap at your feet thanks to a chain of barrier islands. You’re relaxed. What to do later after your meetings finish? Well, there’s golf. Maybe Jet-Skiing. Visit the casino? Or the spa? Perhaps all the above.
Pop quiz: Where in the world are you?
Possibly somewhere in the Caribbean. You could also be in the Mediterranean or maybe coastal Australia.
But you’re actually someplace equally exotic yet all-American: the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
If you’re unfamiliar with this area, you might not automatically mix "Mississippi" and "beaches" in the same sentence. But students in the know travel here for spring break, snowbirds flock to local links for winter golf, and sports groups tackle everything from soccer to volleyball at any of several area sports complexes.
Crystal Johnson, director of sales at the Mississippi Gulf Coast CVB, says relaxation is the point here.
"We like to frame ourselves that we’re a beach destination that also has gaming, golf and fishing. Our ad tagline is ‘Relax, it’s the Mississippi Gulf Coast’—kind of letting people come here and relax, and they can take it easy since there is a multitude of things to do."
The Magnolia State’s coastline is one of America’s better-kept meeting secrets, but fortunately it’s starting to get some well-deserved recognition. The post-Katrina rebuilding process is largely complete, and today, the Gulf Coast’s major breadwinners—casinos, golf courses, historic sites, galleries, and commercial and sport-fishing docks—are again drawing visitors from around the lower Midwest and South.
One of the few silver linings of Hurricane Katrina is that the area’s infrastructure is almost entirely new, from bridges to highways to electrical lines and landscaping. Access is easy since the whole area parallels Interstate 10 and is also served by the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport and via Amtrak from nearby New Orleans.
Gulfport/Biloxi
Gulfport is Mississippi’s second-largest city after the state capital, Jackson, and its 70,000 citizens have recovered nicely from the pounding inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. (In that, Gulfport takes after native son Brett Favre, the NFL quarterback, who also knows a bit about getting up after a hit.) Millions are still being spent to restore and improve the Port of Gulfport, city law now protects its stately oaks and shade-giving magnolias, and in November Business Week named Gulfport Mississippi’s best place to raise children.
Gulfport is also where visitors can board a ferry for the 70-minute ride to Ship Island, one of the barrier islands that protect the mainland from storms. Visitors can also soak in history at the western end of Ship Island, home to the Civil War-era Fort Massachusetts, which changed hands twice during the war and was used by Union forces as a prisoner-of-war camp and a staging area for the invasion of New Orleans.
More recently, the Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center has added to the area’s appeal for meeting planners. Located in Biloxi, the convention center reopened in October 2009 after a thorough facelift and a more than doubling of available meeting space to 400,000 square feet. The arena has reserved seating for up to 12,000 and hosts national performers such as Cirque du Soleil and Carrie Underwood.
Biloxi is also the site of several casinos, some of which have meeting space. Examples include the IP Casino Resort Spa, which has nearly 1,100 rooms and over 37,000 square feet of meeting space, and the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino, with 1,740 guest rooms and 50,000 square feet of space. In addition, the Grand Biloxi Casino Hotel and Spa, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Isle Casino Hotel Biloxi and Treasure Bay Casino & Hotel also have meeting spaces of varying size.
Richard Forester, executive director at the Mississippi Gulf Coast CVB, says the convention center is helping expand the Gulf Coast’s pull beyond the driving-distance South.
"With the new convention center, we’ve got some real potential for new business there. We’ve positioned ourselves to appeal to Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and southwest Tennessee, [but also] have a lot of interest from northwest Florida as well as Georgia, and increased inquiries from Texas."
In April, Gulfport hosted a Champions Tour golf tournament, the Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic, and at press time was hosting the Gulf Coast Winter Classic, a six-week equestrian event at the Harrison County Fairgrounds, with an impact of about 10,000 room nights.
Bay St. Louis/Hancock County
The town of Bay St. Louis flanks the opening of St. Louis Bay and offers big variety for a town of just 8,000. An artists’ colony with at least 200 working artists, it’s also the site of NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center, the premier rocket-engine testing ground in the U.S. The town ranges from watercolors to rocket science, with stops in between for shopping, casino games, golf and deep-sea fishing.
Beth Carriere, executive director at the Mississippi West Coast/Hancock County Tourism Development Bureau, thinks Hancock County probably has the most balanced tourism destination in the region or maybe even in the state.
"You can have a space experience or an old-time beach-blanket-bingo fire on the beach," she says. "We’re the nearest location to New Orleans (about a 40-minute drive) and the French Quarter for side trips, which is great for people to either lengthen their stay or ‘hub’ here and ‘spoke’ out."
She adds that Bay St. Louis is the first place Biloxi-based casinos think of when they arrange spousal day trips, thanks to the dining, shopping and other attractions there.
The Hollywood Casino Bay St. Louis is the major meetings venue here, with 291 guest rooms and 17,000 square feet of meeting space on a 600-acre resort.
"So your convention or meeting that wants to incorporate a golf tournament can happen right there; there’s no need to transport people off-site," Carriere says.
The Stennis Space Center also offers professional tours plus Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts who managed to nurse their damaged spacecraft back to Earth. Haise is available to keynote events in Bay St. Louis.
Another byproduct of the high concentration of artists and regional-cuisine restaurants here is that the Mississippi West Coast/Hancock County Tourism Development Bureau can arrange to have painters, potters, trained chefs and other artisans visit attendees and teach them anything from painting and ceramics to the art of making pralines.
And of course, Hancock County is happy to attract guys’ weekends with the combination of food, fishing, gaming and golf, while gals’ weekends can revolve around shopping, spas, spirits and slots, Carriere says, emphasizing that the "spirits" can be either the type found at bars or the type that palm readers tell you about.
Ocean Springs/Jackson County
East of Gulfport and Biloxi and adjacent to the Back Bay of Biloxi is Ocean Springs, which, like Bay St. Louis to the west, has a statistically improbable number of artists and artisans. The result is an appealing blend of artisanal culture with more traditional beach destination goings-on.
"The reason that we are appropriate for visitors and meetings is pretty obvious," says Margaret Miller, executive director of the Ocean Springs Chamber of Commerce.
"We’ve got over 100 shops and galleries in our downtown; 104 restaurants on our new website, www.oceanspringseats.com; and we host many events, like last week a gigantic pub crawl [for St. Patrick’s Day]. For a small town, we’re offering a lot of big-town opportunity."
Miller admits that Ocean Springs doesn’t have many boutique hotels downtown, but over a dozen chain hotels are located about a mile away, several with meeting space. The town’s community center hosts about 200, and the Ocean Springs Civic Center holds roughly 300 people. Ocean Springs also features Gulf of Mexico views, beaches with fire pits for night events and a park with an amphitheater.
One recent arrival here is the Viking Cooking School at the Mary C. O’Keefe Cultural Center—yes, Viking, the legendary maker of super-powered ovens and ranges. It offers a cafe and cooking lessons for groups.
Visitors who want to get closer to nature have no need to leave surrounding Jackson County, and should instead proceed to Davis Bayou, a unit of Gulf Islands National Seashore, for some hiking, bird-watching or kayaking.
Paul D. Kretkowski writes frequently about travel, food and sports. He is also the founder of Beacon (www.softpowerbeacon.blogspot.com), a blog about foreign policy.
