Bringing Benefits Ashore with Tourism

Tourism supports the North Myrtle Beach we all know and love. It’s more than just visitors enjoying our beaches; it plays a key role in keeping our community and local economy strong. As our leading industry, it fuels thousands of jobs in hotels, dining, retail, and entertainment. Without that support, many of those businesses and the jobs they provide would not survive. Explore how a thriving tourism industry helps protect the lifestyle and opportunities that make North Myrtle Beach special.

How Tourism Fuels Our Community’s Success

• The City's fiscal year 2025 budget is $207.8 million-a substantial investment in our future.
• Who’s really paying? Much of this funding is supported by visitor spending. $15.1 million in accommodation taxes helps pay for essential city services without year-round use by those contributors.
• North Myrtle Beach benefits from a strong tax base driven by tourism, helping to keep resident property taxes lower.

Tourism Keeps Your Taxes Lower

Second homeowners pay a 6% property tax rate—higher than the 4% for residents and visitors contribute through sales, accommodations, and business taxes. Additional tax credits are also available for primary residents.

Tourism Gives More Choices & More Convenience

Tourism dramatically increases demand, far beyond what our resident population alone would support.

Tourism Enhances Quality of Life

Visitors contribute a large share of accommodations taxes and hospitality fees, helping fund benefits enjoyed by residents every day.

Our Visitors Make a Big Impact

We strive to attract families—whether related or multi-generational groups of friends—by introducing them to our natural beaches, family-friendly experiences, culinary delights, and entertainment options.

• Our media results reveal key audience personas and top segments who resonate most with our messaging:
  • Financial Experts, Mobile Mavens, and Travel Enthusiasts
  • DINKs (Dual Income No Kids)
  • Active Adventurers
  • Family Travel Intenders
  • Parents of High Schoolers
  • Parents of Young Children
  • Millennial Travel Intenders
  • Vacation Intenders
  • Road Trippers
  • Households with Income of $250K+
• See a sampling of our messaging below

Destination NMB is responsible for the overall marketing of our community to visitors and that funding is restricted to out-of-county and out-of-state audiences. Here’s how we know it’s working:

• Visitor Spend
  • We used Zartico, a data analytics platform, to track how visitors spent money and moved around North Myrtle Beach.
  • This data showed us who spent what and where within our community.
  • By analyzing phone and credit card data, we identified typical visitors and understood spending patterns from key places they came from.
• Advertising Attribution
  • We partnered with Adara, the world’s largest travel loyalty and reward data co-op, to track and measure advertising attribution.
  • By using pixels in our digital advertising, we were able to follow visitors to North Myrtle Beach who consumed our ads.
  • All reported data covered spending in the destination, so data from hotels and motels that were booked online was not included in the total credit card spend, along with visitors' spend who did not see our advertising.

Meet Seamore!

Hey NMB, meet Seamore the Sea Turtle, the newest teammate here at Destination NMB. Seamore will be your guide for getting out and about in the local NMB community! Find the spot (think landmarks, public places, and businesses) where Seamore is pictured at a new North Myrtle Beach location each week, snap a picture and interact with the local business or NMB hot spot, then post your "shell-fie" to social media tagging @destinationnmb and using #seemorewithseamore and #destinationnmb to enter our monthly prize drawings! The more you participate, the more chances you have to win!