Coastal tourism boards lose income stream; seeking private money

A coalition of 10 coastal parishes that worked cooperatively to market Louisiana’s coast to tourists has run out of recurring income now that a grant from BP has been spent.

But the Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition, which includes Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, can still operate for three more years and is working on getting additional money from oil companies.

The individual parish tourism offices had always intended to work together, said Carrie Stansbury, chairman of the LTCC board.

“We’ve always wanted to work together as a coalition,” Stansbury said. “But when the BP oil spill came about, it gave us sort of that incentive to actually formalize it, to do it. So the reasons to do it are still as valid today as they were prior to the BP oil spill.”

According the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s office, at the end of June 2014 the coastal group had $312,342. The LTCC was funded solely by grants from BP after the spill and membership dues. Those dues totaled $47,500.

Stansbury said that while people wouldn’t know where, say, Houma is, they would know where the Louisiana coast is and that is what the LTCC tries to market.

LTCC advertised the region’s tourist attractions in ways that each individual parish could not, Stansbury said. They made a television commercial that broadcast in Alabama, Georgia and Texas, and they marketed heavily online.

There are two other coalitions like the LTCC in the state, but it was the only one that had the money to do that far-reaching of a campaign.

“Typically, the other regional groups do not operate with the kind of funding that LTCC has operated with and obviously they were trying to overcome an image and perception [problem] in the wake of that spill,” said Kyle Edmondson, assistant secretary of tourism at the Louisiana Office of Tourism.

Edmondson said the state cannot offer much money to individual parish tourism offices this year due to budget cuts, and can only offer a $15,000 advertising grant that is matched by each parish 50/50.

The LTCC can continue to operate with the current amount they have, albeit in a more limited capacity, for three more years, said Shelly Johnson, Vice Chairman of the LTCC.

The LTCC has hired a public relations company to bring in travel writers to visit the coastal parishes with money put up by each individual member tourism office.

In the last six months, the LTCC has created a sub-organization to pitch oil company executives, convincing them to help finance their operations, Johnson said.

“Our belief is that we really need to work in harmony with the oil industry, and the oil industry has to work in harmony with the tourism industry,” said Greg Buisson, a media relations strategist contracted by the LTCC.

The LTCC’s Oil Consortium Fund will ask oil companies that do business off of Louisiana’s coast to dedicate money for a five year period to promote nature-based tourism in the region, he said.

“It’s in its infancy at the moment,” Buisson said. Contacts are just being made and goals for the LTCC are being redrawn. The LTCC has to plan projects based on staggered payments over time as opposed to the receipt of one large lump sum of cash from a grant, like the BP money following the Deepwater Horizon.

One of those goals would be to lure back many of the charter fishermen who left the region for other waters after the spill, Buisson said. He noted some of the best offshore fishing is done near oil rigs.

The oil companies that decide to partner with the LTCC will have their logos on all LTCC publications, Buisson said.

“Nothing would make us happier than to have an ad that at the very bottom of it said, ‘Louisiana nature-based tourism is supported strongly be these partners’ and there’s a list of 22 major oil companies that are doing business in the Gulf of Mexico,” Buisson said. “That’s our dream and our goal.”

Carrie Stansbury, chairwoman of the Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition, said future funding is being sought from oil companies.