Page 146 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2024

FINAL SAY
CYNTHIA
SUTTON
President & CEO,
Ocean Springs Chamber-Main Street-Tourism Bureau
The Ocean Springs Chamber of Commerce-Main Street- Tourism Bureau is a three-tiered organization helping local businesses gain networking, marketing, promotion and commerce opportunities. Through our Main Street program, we focus on preserving our downtown and creating economic vitality with festivals and events. We operate the city’s tourism bureau housed inside the historic L&N train depot and serve as the city’s marketing arm focusing on branding and promoting our community.
Small business is our business in Ocean Springs. There are more than 260,000 small businesses in operation in the state of Mississippi. Small businesses exist in a variety of forms, from corner stores to food trucks to online boutiques. These businesses help give a neighborhood strength and create vibrant, diverse communities.
In Ocean Springs, we have hundreds of locally-owned shops, restaurants, and galleries downtown, uptown, all around town. These businesses are truly vital to our economy as well as attractors to our quality of life and tourism. I am sure you have seen “Mr. Main Street” a.k.a. Danny Walton around town.
He visits on average 50 businesses a week to help keep them updated on the happenings around town, work with them on development, and to share some cheer.
In 2023, our business community both small and big contributed to the continually growing tax revenue to Ocean Springs. We celebrated ribbon cuttings and worked with more than 50 new businesses that opened or expanded. Hundreds of new jobs were created.
Did you know that tourism is one of the top industries in Mississippi? More than 100,000 Mississippians work in the travel and tourism sector. With nearly 24 million visitors through Mississippi annually, Coastal Mississippi is the top visited area in the state. Most traveled for leisure. That is our specialty here in Ocean Springs.
In 2023, we had visitors to our area from 49 states and 14 different countries. On average, our team gets to talk with 400
visitors monthly. These visitors come to our community to eat at our local restaurants, shop at our local businesses, attend a show or visit our museum, state park or our monthly festivals and events.
Visitors have a huge impact on our community as you can
see, so our team at the Ocean Springs Chamber of Commerce- Main Street-Tourism Bureau always strives for the best
when it comes to serving, promoting, and being a part of the community. In fact, we have two certified tourism marketing professionals on staff who work at the Ocean Springs Visitors Center, myself and Morgan Broussard. We take the time to be a part of the community and when you take that time and build relationships in the community and throughout the state, you find a drive and a commitment like no other.
My team and I, along with my board of directors and strong volunteer team, want to see the community grow, prosper and thrive with positive and creative resources, businesses, and artists. In fact, we have trademarked the community brand,
I Love OS for just that reason. Next time you pass through downtown, stop by our historic train depot and take a picture in front of the five-foot I Love OS sculpture and tag us with #ILoveOS.
At the Chamber-Main Street, we are devoted to promoting tourism, providing progressive leadership as well as enhancing the local culture and preserving the quality of life. Together with our partners, we hope to aid in establishing a wonderful quality of life for all who live and work here. And, we will continue to produce a strong calendar of events and activities, that support the business and residential community.
146 | July 2024
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