Louisiana spotlight: Nungesser keeping state top of mind for those ready to explore

American Press

5 hours ago

Traveling has been significantly increasing since the decline during the COVID-19 pandemic — and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and his team are working hard to keep Louisiana top of mind for those ready to explore.
Last year, Nungesser said his office used a U.S. Commerce Department grant to increase awareness of Louisiana as a travel destination in Mumbai and New Delhi, India; Madrid, Spain; and Milan, Italy. In a few months, the team will spend a week in Canada promoting the Bayou State and its French heritage.
Canada 'is about 33 percent of our international market,' Nungesser told members of the Rotary Club of Lake Charles Wednesday afternoon. 'Those Canadians love them some Louisiana.'
In Paris, the Louisiana Office of Tourism also wrapped taxi cabs serving as rolling billboards to inspire travel to the state and it sponsored the London Jazz Festival last year.
Nungesser said Louisiana welcomed 43 million domestic and international visitors in 2023, the most recent data available. Those visitors spent a total of $18.1 billion, an increase of 5.4 percent over 2022.
International visitation showed the most significant gain, he said, increasing 16.9 percent in 2023 with spending reaching $1.7 billion.
Louisiana has also been on the national stage in recent months with an alligator-themed float that crawled the streets of Pasadena, Calif., for the 136th annual Rose Parade and again as host to the Super Bowl at the Superdome in New Orleans.
'Somebody asked me what do we do better than anyone else and I said Mardi Gras,' Nungesser said. 'So we found out what parades we could go to. We were in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for three years and now we're in the Rose Parade.'
Though the floats are professionally designed, they are decorated by volunteers days before the parade. Every float is covered in flowers, leaves, seeds, bark and other natural materials to honor the Rose Parade's history.
Nungesser said volunteers from Louisiana are flown to California and are shuttled between the warehouse where the float is being built to their accommodations. A New Orleans native who now resides in California brings her beignets-only food truck each day to feed the volunteers during their shifts and the best of Louisiana cuisine is served each night.
'It's a trip everybody should make,' he said.
For more on volunteering, visit explorelouisiana.com/rose-parade/volunteer-information.
Nungesser said participation in the parade 'allows us to drive awareness about our state as a vacation destination to a broad number of attendees, as well as viewers watching from home,' Nungesser said. 'The return on investment for the Rose Parade has been incredible.'
Nungesser said the Rose Parade media coverage — thanks to a plethora of morning show interviews aired across the nation as the float is being built — for the past four years reached an estimated 10.4 billion people and was worth $144.9 million.
State Parks
When Nungesser took office nearly a decade ago, seven state parks were under the threat of closure.
'I was told, 'You don't have the money to keep them open and they're in pretty bad shape,' ' he said. 'Thanks to our sheriffs and local volunteers we were able to do a lot of repair and get them presentable and today those seven parks are making a profit.'
The Louisiana Office of State Parks operates 21 state parks, 14 historic sites and a preservation area that comprises 45,000 acres, 110 miles of roads and 1.2 million square feet of rental facilities that welcomed more than 1.75 million visitors last year.
He said his new goal is creating resort conference centers within some of the state parks to attract visiting conferences.
'We have over 350 groups that meet every year all over Louisiana,' he said. 'They don't meet in New Orleans because the hotel does not cover their per diem, but they meet everywhere else. There's usually 300-500 people and it's a great opportunity for us and it would be a great for the local economies. One thing we won't do is we won't let anyone open a restaurant (within the conference centers) or anything that would compete with local businesses.'
One state park thriving at the moment is Bogue Chitto — a top destination for travelers nationwide for its mountain biking trails, which are maintained by the North Shore Off-Road Bicycling Association.
'A thousand people a month from 10-15 states go to Washington Parish for this mountain bike trail,' he said. 'We also have horseback riding. We brought a gentleman's horses into the park and let him run the business out of the park and he's knocking it out of the park, no pun intended. These two private-public partnerships have put Washington Parish on the map. Before they had very little tourism. It has changed that town forever.'
Prime Video just completed a documentary on the mountain bike trails and 25 percent of the proceeds will go into building additional trails.
He said the park recently acquired an additional 600 acres to expand the mountain bike and horseback riding trails.
Museums
Nungesser's office oversees nine museums; the Secretary of State's office and some local cities operate the rest. He said he hopes to introduce a bill next year that would force all museums to be open on the weekends — every museum operated under the Secretary of State's Office are not — when people are off work and more likely to visit.
His office has also bought the website LouisianaMuseums.com and plans to video every museum in the state.
'We did a video about the ghost that's upstairs at the Beauregard Gothic Jail — I don't know if it's there but the lady has me convinced and I'm not going up to check — and we test marketed to people who like ghosts and at Halloween, 4,000 people showed up to find that ghost,' he said. 'If you have a ghost, we will promote it and they will come.'
He said most are aware of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Now promotions will tie in Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, the Louisiana Military Museum in Abbeville and others to draw in like-minded visitors.
He also wants to give all museums the freedom to hire the directors of their choice. Right now, that responsibility falls under the office that oversees the facility.
Louisiana seafood
Several key pieces of legislation passed during the 2024 Regular Legislative Session affected the seafood industry in the state.
Act 47 mandates restaurants serving imported crawfish or shrimp must officially inform their customers on the menu; Act 148 requires restaurants and food service establishments to label on menus all imported seafood as such, not just shrimp and crawfish; and Act 756 transferred the Seafood Safety Task Force to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board to help in the regulation of imported seafood.
'We want people to ask before they eat. The goal is to prevent imported seafood — which is filled with a lot of antibiotics — to come into this country and to level the playing field for our Louisiana fishermen,' he said. 'If you eat Boudreaux's crawfish tails, they're going to be from Boudreaux's. They're not going to be from Thailand.'
Keep Louisiana Beautiful
Love the Boot Week is Louisiana's largest litter removal and beautification effort. During 2024, 19,441 people volunteered a total of 100,712 hours at over 760 events, removing a record 347 tons of litter in all 64 parishes.
'It has become a movement,' Nungesser said.
Their efforts diverted 293 pounds of aluminum cans and 330 pounds of plastic bottles from the landfill allowing the items to be recycled.
Next month, the office will be handing out buckets at marinas around the state, asking boaters and fishermen to scoop up any trash they may see on the waterways and shorelines.
'We're not going to take our foot off the gas until we have no more trash in Louisiana,' Nungesser said.