MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW)-Earlier this week the Myrtle Beach area chamber of commerce was presented with results from a tourism survey. It showed Myrtle Beach has a great base for tourism, but chamber president brad dean said the city still needs new ways to bring people to our area.
The Myrtle Beach sports center could be one way of doing that. The center has only been open for a year and is doing surprisingly well.
More than 40 events were hosted here bringing in more than 200-thousand people from all over the country. This year, more events are expected to be held here, bringing in more people and more money.
Each year Myrtle Beach has 17-million visitors but chamber President Brad Dean wants to see that number grow to 20-million.
The survey suggested, in order to do that, Myrtle Beach would need more year-round visitors and attract people to our area that have never visited before.
Mark Beale, the marketing and business development director at the sports complex said he believes the complex is one way to grow tourism.
“We are having a national archery in schools event that is happening in June that will bring in roughly four to five thousand archers from around the world. Different countries will be visiting here so we know with an event like that that has never been in Myrtle Beach, we get those new visitors here and we can kind of brag about that like hey this is a lot of these people’s first times ever stepping foot in Myrtle Beach.”
Beale said 20 events are already in the book for this year and it’ll only get busier as summer gets closer.
He also said several event coordinators have signed multi-year deals at the complex which will continue to be a good thing for hotels and restaurants.
